


I Don't Love You (And I Always Will)

by thegingerbatch (WendyBird)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Dream Sex, Fingering, First Kiss, M/M, Magical Realism, Oral Sex, Post-Reichenbach, Rimming, au-ish, five times fic, pretty much ignoring any setlock information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:15:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WendyBird/pseuds/thegingerbatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now complete! Post-Reichenbach, Slightly AU. Sherlock returns to London after faking his death to discover John has married and moved on. What's more, John refuses to forgive him, and Sherlock doesn't understand why. Determined to find out, Sherlock pries into John's dreams...and discovers there may be more to John's feelings than he anticipated. Five times Sherlock read John's mind and one time John read his instead. This work is for fan enjoyment only. Please do not share on other media without permission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All lyrics belong to The Civil Wars and sensibility recordings. Love and cookies and naked pictures of Martin Freeman for my glorious beta, **agnesanutter**.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cover for this story can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1144742), created by the lovely **fiorinda_chancellor**! Thank you, dear!

You only know what I want you to  
      _(I know everything you don't want me to)_  
 _  
_  


§  


Sherlock finishes his examination and straightens. “Not heart failure. Cyanide poisoning,” he declares.

Molly checks her clipboard, glancing from her notes to the body on the table before them. “Yes—yeah,” she stammers. “That…I mean, it fits.”

“Of course it fits.” Sherlock snorts. “I wasn’t guessing. I don’t—” He cuts off, looking up as the morgue door opens.

John takes a half step into the room before he spots Sherlock. He makes eye contact, freezing for a moment before his gaze skitters away. “Sorry,” he says, coughing into the sudden silence. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He shifts his weight to his other foot, his left thumb twisting his wedding ring around his finger—stiff, polite, awkward.

“Not at all.” Sherlock keeps his voice cool. There is distance in the set of John’s shoulders; Sherlock echoes it in the crisp efficiency with which he removes his latex gloves. Why not? John is nothing to him anymore. 

His traitorous heart wrenches sideways at the thought, and he takes a deep breath. _Nothing_ , his mind reiterates. _Like a vacuum_. And then, less helpfully, his brain notes the aptitude of the comparison: a breathless sort of nothing, a huge, hulking nothing, a conspicuous absence. 

Sherlock prods the empty space in his mind where John’s perfectly fascinating, humdrum consciousness used to reside, and it doesn’t hurt, precisely. Sherlock has deleted things before. It’s just that this one, John deleted for him—took away his access to this place with one command, the basic rule of their new existence: Sherlock is forbidden from listening to John’s thoughts, and John in turn has never reopened his own window into Sherlock’s psyche. 

Seeing John now, Sherlock remembers the conversation.

_“A wife?” Sherlock can’t keep the incredulity from his voice._

_“Yes, a wife. People do that, you know. Fall in love. Get married.”_

_“Ordinary people, yes.”_

_John looks tired and amused and halfway to punching him. Sherlock wishes he would. He’d know how to respond to that. But amused wins out, and John offers him an odd little smile._

_“We can’t all be you, Sherlock.”_

_“More’s the pity.” He says the words, but he hardly hears himself. John isn’t coming back to Baker Street. He reaches out in his mind, finds the room where John used to dwell. He’s been gone so long, and playing dead meant he had to keep this door closed, but how he’s missed it, the feeling of John’s consciousness bleeding into his own. The door handle quivers at his touch, opens a fraction._

  _A sea of exhaustion washes over him, shot through with brilliant blue sorrow, swirling currents of anger, eddies of something bitter and sharp—betrayal? Sherlock is drowning under the weight of it, and Christ, how can John feel all that and show so little?  Then something else swims up through the cresting wave—_ ** _No_** _—and the door slams shut._

_“Stop that,” says John. Sherlock blinks, disoriented by the abrupt return to his own thoughts. “You can’t just—it can’t be like before.”_

_John is frowning, and Sherlock studies his eyes, reading the determination there. Something shifts inside of him, and he moves to catch it before it falls._

_“Look, I can’t—” John begins._

_Sherlock’s phone vibrates, and he checks the screen._

_“Lestrade?” John asks._

_“Murder-suicide in Fulham.” Sherlock types out a response, presses send. Carefully avoids looking up. In his mind, he is still hovering outside the door to John’s room, poised uncertainly, expectantly, as if John might still let him in. “Care to join?”_

_“Sherlock…”_

_The tone tells him everything he needs to know. The thing he was trying to catch slips through his fingers, shatters somewhere down deep in his belly. He breathes through the ache, pushes up from the table. They are close enough to touch; they are a million miles apart._

_He leaves without saying goodbye._

Sherlock realises he’s staring at the floor--down and slightly to the left, a man lost in memory. He’s fleetingly embarrassed; his thoughts must be so obvious, his reverie so plain on his face—but then he remembers there’s no one here who can read him. Not anymore.

And that’s fine, the space between them. Foolish of Sherlock to expect forgiveness, really. Three years is a long time to be dead. One doesn’t come back to life all at once—or not the same life, anyway. John has gotten on without him. A job, a wife, a whole life apart from Sherlock. The closed door in his mind that Sherlock pokes at like a bruise—it ought to be a reminder. Alone is better. Alone is safer.  

So Sherlock matches him in body language and tone of voice—but he takes advantage of John’s averted gaze to look him over, cataloguing each detail for later review: pinched lips, dark eyes, stubble on his neck and chin and cheeks. Tired. Distracted.  Worried about something—what?

_Doesn’t matter_ , he tells himself, and the voice in his head sounds like John’s. _None of your business_.

“John, hi!” Molly chirps, overcompensating for the chill between them. “We’re just wrapping up here.”

“Oh, yes. I was actually going to check…that’s Mr. Woodward?”

“Yours from this morning, yeah?”

“Yeah. Those splotches on the skin—over-oxygenation of the blood. I thought it might be worth letting Lestrade—”

Sherlock interrupts smoothly, the flat, rapid monologue spilling from his lips. “Well spotted, John, but Molly called _me_ instead of Lestrade—saves time. Definitely cyanide. The calluses on his fingers say he’s a devoted gardener, so he might have access to cyanide salts, but he doesn’t seem a likely candidate for a suicide attempt; he had hobbies, interests—hardly a psychological diagnosis, but doesn’t seem the hallmark of a depressed individual. Most likely homicide, most likely wife—at a guess, I’d say jealousy; paid more attention to his roses than to her. She wouldn’t have said anything, but people do hold grudges, don’t they?” 

He looks at John for just a fraction of a second too long, but John only tilts his head, absorbing the blow without parrying. Acid creeps into Sherlock’s tone, hot beneath the ice there. “But forgive me,” he says. “You don’t want to know any of this, I’m sure.”

Still, John’s stoic mask does not crack, his blank gaze fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Sherlock’s chest. He is a wall—and God, Sherlock could tell you how many times that wall has been painted, could read the wall’s whole history, etched in stains and shadows, but he can’t see behind it. How has John managed to shut him out so entirely?

“Yeah,” John says, and shakes himself. “Yeah, well, if that’s sorted, then...” He thrusts his chin out. “Cheers, Molly.” To Sherlock, he says nothing.

Molly’s smile is pained. “Sure, I mean I didn’t—”

But the door swings shut, and John is gone. The back of Sherlock’s neck itches.

“—really do anything,” Molly finishes lamely. She glances at Sherlock. “Sorry.”

“What for?” He is still watching the closed door, thinking about nothing.

Molly’s hand on his arm brings his attention back to her. She jumps a little, seems surprised at herself for touching him, and takes a small step back. “He’ll forgive you. He has to. Eventually, I mean.”

One hand on his hip, he waves her away. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t.” His head swings around, his gaze sharp, but she does not back down this time. Like hunger pangs or a headache, Molly is easy to ignore—until, quite suddenly, she isn’t anymore.  “Don’t pretend it’s nothing,” she says. “He deserves... _you_ deserve better than that.”

_But it is_ , Sherlock thinks. _So much nothing. Heavy, suffocating nothing._ He can hear it, the emptiness, all the fine clockwork of his brain clicking maddeningly around a missing gear. His shoulders hunch, trying to block out the sound. _So much nothing I will die of it._  

Molly half turns away, then pivots back. “Look, I wasn’t going to say, but you should know.”

Sherlock, in the midst of reaching for his coat, pauses, raising an eyebrow at her. She scratches at her forehead with the back of her thumb, impervious to his impatience. “He asks about you.”

Another beat, and he forces himself to shrug into the coat with casual indifference. “Does he?” 

“I mean, not directly. He asks about the cases. He spends most of his day putting sutures in ten-year-olds and convincing old women they’ve not actually had a coronary. I think he’s bored. And...” Her eyes find his. “He misses you, Sherlock. I know he does.” 

Sherlock’s ribs seem to tighten like a vice, like his lungs are expanding, alveoli scrambling to diffuse oxygen to his bloodstream. His head spins, and he adjusts his scarf around his neck, makes himself take a breath—not a shuddering breath, not a deep breath, just a breath like any other.

“We’re done here,” he says, and it is no less a declaration for its softness. 

A lingering moment while Molly watches his eyes, reluctant to let it go. Then she sighs, and she is meek again. “Right. I’ll just finish Mr. Woodward on my own, then.”

Sherlock, still struggling for air around the John-shaped hollow in his chest, doesn’t hear her.

§

Logically, Sherlock knows, time does not slow to a crawl. There are still sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day. But without a case on, those hours bleed together, stutter and stretch into an endless blur, a flat, dull landscape without a horizon. He hasn’t felt hungry for days, and only remembers to feed himself after nearly passing out over a petri dish containing a particularly virulent strain of _E. coli_. Sleep proves elusive, as well; Sherlock’s regular four hours every other day has become a haphazard sort of napping roulette, with unconsciousness overtaking him at odd times. He finds himself asleep at his microscope one evening, the eyepiece digging marks into the soft flesh of his cheeks.

He attempts to distract himself with experiments, but Mrs. Hudson complains of the smell. It’s hardly his fault—he can’t measure fungal growth on decomposing tissue without actual decomposing tissue, now can he? And he did promise to clean out the kitchen sink when he was finished. 

The real problem isn’t the experiments, anyway. It’s Molly words, echoing through the empty places of his mind. _He misses you. I know he does._ And oh God, is this what he’s reduced to, relying on _Molly’s_ deductions?

He perches on the back of his black leather armchair, glaring over steepled fingers at its empty tartan mate. This is foolish. He got on perfectly well before John. He worked, he fed himself when necessary, he slept—well, passed out on any available surface when the need overwhelmed him, but the point is he _managed_. Even in the three years he was away, he functioned just _fine_ without John present. But now, the mere thought that John may be as miserable as he is—Sherlock can’t leave it alone. 

It takes six days, twenty-one hours, and four minutes for him to realise he can’t go on like this. It takes another seven minutes for him to decide on a course of action, which as it turns out, is rather straightforward. If he wants to see John, he’ll have to ask.

Distaste twists his mouth into a grimace, and he fidgets idly with his phone. He’s already faced John once, offered apologies, made himself vulnerable, and it got him precisely nowhere. He has no reason to assume it will be different now, and only Molly’s word that there is anything like sympathy waiting on John’s end. 

He closes his eyes, conjuring up the image of John at the morgue from a few days earlier. He focuses on the details he noticed—the bags under his eyes, the day-old stubble...and the ring. John had been continuously toying with his wedding band, like it was a tic, like he did it so often he hardly even noticed it anymore. A newly married man might do that, unused to wearing jewellery, mind constantly drifting to his wife. But John’s been married for the better part of a year now—and he hadn’t touched the ring at all during his first conversation with Sherlock, all those months ago.

The memory laid out before him like a computer simulation, Sherlock is free to move about the scene at will. His brain supplies details he hadn’t registered in the moment, and he glances behind John now, where a clock hangs on the wall. John entered the morgue at 7:48 PM. According to the shift chart posted in A&E (which Sherlock absolutely does not _check_ , but he can’t help it if he sees it on his way up to the lab on occasion), John’s shift that evening ended at seven. Factoring in enough time for him to gather his things, possibly even a quick rinse in the staff showers...no, John would have finished all that in less than twenty minutes. Stalling, then. He hadn’t wanted to head home. 

Sherlock opens a new text message. His hands shake ever so slightly, and he is amazed how much courage it takes to type one word. Just one word, but so much depends on the answer.

**9:37 PM**  
 _Dinner?  
SH_

His phone vibrates almost immediately.

**9:38 PM  
** _Why are you texting me? - John_

Sherlock’s held breath escapes in an irritated grunt. It’s not a yes, but the speed of the response, the fact that John didn’t ignore him—it’s hopeful. Hopeful enough that he relaxes into his more customary (John would say tactless) diction.

**9:40 PM**  
 _Because you’re avoiding your wife, you want to talk to me, and you won’t initiate contact.  
SH_

The pause is a bit longer this time. Sherlock strokes one finger along the screen of his phone, staring in surprise when it leaves a vague fog of sweat behind. He wipes his palms on his trousers. His phone vibrates again.

**9:46 PM  
** _Bit late for dinner. Maybe a pint? - John_

The relief is immediate and overwhelming, like a dam breaking in Sherlock’s mind. The empty John-place in his mind suddenly seems a bit less bottomless.

**9:47 PM**  
 _Corner pub, twenty minutes.  
SH_

He is gathering his things before the message has finished sending.

§ 

John’s glass is nearly empty before him; he stares absently into it. Sherlock sips at a coffee and waits.

“She’s not wrong, I guess,” John says at last, apparently concluding whatever mental debate he was conducting. Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise.

“She says we never talk anymore. Says I don’t pay attention to her.” He takes a sip of his ale, and Sherlock studies the sardonic smile that touches his lips as he swallows. “I don’t know what to say to that.” 

“But you think she’s right.”

“It’s hard to explain.” He looks up at Sherlock, his tone apologetic. “I’m not sure you’d understand.”

Sherlock grimaces. “I’m not a simpleton. Just because I choose not to indulge in every emotion that presents itself doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of comprehending them.”

John’s eyes harden, the grit in his voice ruffling the surface of Sherlock’s indifferent veneer. “I never said you were a simpleton, and we both know you feel a hell of a lot more than you want anyone to believe. Christ, Sherlock, I’ve felt you feeling it.”

There’s a moment of silence while John takes a few deep breaths through his nose, glaring across the table at him. Sherlock glares back, almost itching for a fight. He doesn’t mind John being angry with him. He wouldn’t mind John being anything at all, except this half-stranger he’s become. So when John finally reigns himself in, looks away, Sherlock is torn between relief and disappointment.

John is talking again. “It’s different, being married. When we were dating, we always had stories to tell each other, about our day, about our childhood, some funny joke we’d overheard. Now it’s like—it’s like we know it all. I’m reduced to reciting my patient log from A&E, and God knows no one wants to hear that.”

The revelation clicks into place like a bullet being chambered, Molly’s words affirmed in the lines of John’s shoulders, the tension in his neck, the words he isn’t saying. “You’re bored,” Sherlock says, leaning forward.

“No.” John says it firmly and far too quickly, his nostrils flaring. Sherlock merely raises an eyebrow, and after a moment, John relents. “Maybe. God, I don’t know. Thats normal, though.” It’s more question than statement.

“You’re bored because she isn’t me.”

“What?” Steel in his eyes again, his tone flattening.

“You didn’t just cut yourself off from me, you cut yourself off from anything that reminded you of me—you don’t speak to Lestrade, you avoid Mrs. Hudson. Logic dictates you wouldn’t marry someone if they stood any chance of reminding you of me. And this is where it’s gotten you. Reduced to gleaning scraps of information from Molly when you can't stand to lie to yourself any longer.”

John’s fury is electric, the air between them nearly sparking. “You are so—so fucking _unbelievable_. Without a doubt, the most arrogant sod I have ever—” 

“I told you before. You said getting married was what people do.”

“Yes, and you said ‘ordinary people.’ Will you ever get tired of reminding us mortals of our inferiority?” John’s teeth clench behind the words, biting into each one.

“That’s what I mean. You’re _not_ ordinary.”

“I— ” John’s fingers clench and unclench on the table. “I honestly don’t know how to take that.”

 “When I met you, you were a soldier without a war. It didn’t suit you.”

“And you did?”

Sherlock meets him stare for stare. “Where’s your crutch?”

“Right,” John snorts. He is straining for incredulity, but his anger is slipping now. Sherlock can see it in his eyes as they slide away, a hint of realisation, of acceptance, of—yes, longing. It writhes in his gut, the almost acknowledgment that John truly does _miss_ him. Why can’t he just say it?

And some part of Sherlock must be looking for it, must be always looking for it, because he feels the gap between them suddenly narrow. John’s need is a flame in the corner of his mind, and Sherlock is drawn to it like a moth. He swoops toward it, into it, _through_ it, and finds the door to John’s consciousness gloriously unguarded. Sherlock tears it open without thinking. 

The terror is immediate: unfiltered, unshakeable. It’s so complete that it tears through every defence Sherlock has. For a moment, he’s transported back to Dartmoor, his vision darkening at the edges, becoming a fog-filled hollow haunted by a nightmare hound. He is so immersed that he hardly feels it when John’s anger multiplies, becomes something solid enough to push back. He finds himself back in his own mind, leaning across the table, weight on his elbows—and John, sitting back in his chair now, glaring at him furiously. They are both trembling. 

John opens his mouth, and Sherlock can _see_ the venomous reproach coalescing on his tongue. “Sorry,” the detective says, raising a placating hand to cut him off. Eyes watering, voice raw, he has to pause to clear his throat. “I just...sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

“Startle me? No, you didn’t startle me.” John’s bark of laughter is harsh, unamused. “That, Sherlock, was fear. You startle someone, they feel scared for a second, and then it’s gone. But this, this fear? It doesn’t stop, Sherlock.” His eyes bore into Sherlock’s, and the mask is gone: John is broken and exhausted and, yes, terrified. “It. Never. Stops,” he says, and he makes each word a fist. Sherlock's whole being feels bruised.

Another long minute passes. John finishes the last of his beer. “Look, thanks for the talk,” he says, standing. “I’m sorry I—shit. Why am I apologising? No—” He raises a hand to forestall Sherlock, who starts to rise. “No, it’s fine. I don’t...I don’t know what I expected.”

“John, I—” He stops, uncertain what to say.

“Mary will be waiting up.” 

“John, please.”

And John, half turned away, stops. The emotion draining from him now, he sags a bit. “It’s fine, Sherlock, really.” And softer: “I’m fine.”

_You’re not_ , Sherlock thinks as he watches him leave. 

§


	2. Chapter 2

 

Your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine  
( _You think your dreams are the same as mine_ )

§ 

_Shouldn’t_ is not a word in Sherlock’s working vocabulary. He knows _can’t_ , and he knows _won’t_. But _shouldn’t_ is the brainchild of the indecisive, and Sherlock is rarely anything but certain.

So it doesn’t really occur to him that he _shouldn’t_ be spying on John’s dreams.  In fact, this presents itself as the only available option; after tonight, John is sure to be on his guard any time he’s awake. And so, with one final glance at his watch—12:37 AM—he stretches out on the sofa in 221B, closes his eyes, and lets his mind wander.

He goes slowly, starting in his own flat, his mind noting the altered details there—missing RAMC mug in the cupboard, a single toothbrush in the bathroom now instead of two, empty bedroom upstairs. This he senses more than sees, moving quickly out the door and into a wood-panelled corridor. This is the mind palace proper, the main corridor of his memory, where the most important things are stored, things he needs to access often or things he cannot afford to lose.

He skips over a door that resembles the one in St. Bart’s lab, not bothering to read the plaque mounted to the wall beside it: _Periodic Table, Chemical Properties and Reactions, Chemical Compounds, Catalogue of Scientific Laws, Mathematical Equations_. Further down the hall, a match to Lestrade’s office door boasts a whiteboard that reads _Leukaemia Patient Murder_ in Sherlock’s hasty scrawl. This room is for current cases, and the name changes as each one is solved, any relevant discoveries having been sorted into their appropriate rooms. All other details are deleted; the mind palace is vast, but space is not unlimited.

He pauses at the next door. It’s plain, and somewhat resembles the door to 221 Baker Street, although it is green instead of black, with no brass numbers mounted above the simple knocker. A spartan sort of door, practical but not cold, the sort of door that leads to a room where someone will serve you tea just the way you like it and sit with you in silence next to a well-built fire. In short, a very John Watson sort of door.

In his mind, he raises a hand and rests it against the door. He can actually feel wood grain beneath his fingertips, its texture masked somewhat by a slick layer of paint. None of the other doors have a tactile component, but he has spent so much time outside this particular door that his brain has started elaborating on its details. His fingers slide down to the doorknob, wrapping around the simple brass sphere and just holding for a moment.

A slow twist of his wrist, just in case John is still awake—but the knob turns without hesitation. John is asleep, the door unlocked. It’s as much an invitation as he’s likely to get, and Sherlock’s conscience skips right over the empty space where _shouldn’t_ ought to be. He _can_ and he _will_.

The transition is smoother without John fighting him. He steps from the warm wooden corridor of his imagination directly onto the pavement in front of the St. Bart’s ambulance bay. He takes a moment to orient himself; it’s been years since he’s done this, and while thoughts and emotions can be read like a book, dreams are an entirely separate entity. 

A group of people is massed nearby, their faces blurred, the details of their clothing shifting and imprecise. It’s dizzying to look at. Only two points are fixed: one is his own form, sprawled on the pavement in the middle of the throng, half-obscured by the vague forms surrounding him. There is blood—so much blood, more than he remembers, but then this is John’s dream, John’s mind embellishing the moment with his own horror, colouring in the details with the broad brush of the emotionally invested. Amid the halo of blood, his face is—well, striking. Sherlock takes a moment to process that this is not his objective self, but rather himself as John sees him. It’s decidedly strange, and not a little bit flattering. But he can’t dwell on it, because the second fixed point—John himself—demands his attention.

John struggles at the outer edges of the crowd, pushing forward, but the people-shapes continuously rearrange themselves to block his passage. His face is twisted in grief and frustration, and Sherlock feels that odd tug under his ribs again. Without meaning to, he takes several steps toward him, arm raised.

“John…”

John’s attention shifts from the Sherlock on the ground to the Sherlock walking toward him, and he blinks. Sherlock slows, the air around him thickening, his motions impeded by John’s confusion. He feels a moment of panic at his lack of control; he can retain his identity here, but this is John’s dream. Sherlock’s intentions will broadcast as suggestions, possibilities, but ultimately it is John that dictates what can happen. He is struggling now with this problem of two Sherlocks, and the detective can do little but wait for him to resolve the issue on his own.

Abruptly, the air around him clears—but Sherlock finds he has shifted, is now occupying the blood-soaked pavement at the centre of the crowd. He tries to sit up, to find John, but he can’t move from the awkward sprawl where he’s landed.

And then John is there, parting the crowd, collapsing to his knees beside him. 

“Let me through,” John says, and his dream voice is commanding. Sherlock remembers the broken hitch in his real words and shudders against the pavement.

“John,” he says again, and John’s hands fumble at his wrist.

“I’m here, I’m—”

“John!” A new voice. John glances over his shoulder. Now he’s distracted, Sherlock finds he can move enough to sit up. At the back of the crowd is a slender woman—blonde, pretty, smiling. She holds out a hand toward John, beckoning him with a toss of her head. “Come on, then,” she says. “Leave all that.”

John’s fingers, still loose around his wrist, twitch uncertainly. “Mary?” 

Mary laughs and slides her hand into his. John glances at Sherlock, then back to her. 

“Please.” The strength has seeped from his voice, and he’s nearly begging. “I have to help.” 

“I’m fine,” Sherlock interjects. “It isn’t real.” John looks back at him, a flash of something cold in his eyes.

Mary tugs at his hand. “You see? He doesn’t need you. Come _on_ , John.”

John’s grip on Sherlock’s wrist becomes tighter, his jaw setting. His whispered words are ostensibly addressed to Mary, but his eyes never leave Sherlock’s. “No. Why would he need me?”

Sherlock feels the muscles of his face go slack, his brain tossing out contradictory responses: _Of course I don’t need you, I don’t need anyone_ — _except I do now, I do, John, and it’s awful_. His tongue fights to put this into words, tripping over his own guilt and John’s icy resolve. In the end, he says nothing. John is still holding on, still watching him. 

Mary’s calm is slowly giving way to frustration.  “He’s not your job anymore,” she says, dropping John’s hand and folding her arms across her chest. “You can’t keep going back to him.”

John shakes his head. “I’m _trying_.”

“Just let _go_ of him!”

“I can’t just—I can’t.” John seems to fold in on himself, miserable. 

Sherlock is still, uncomfortable, trying to remember what he was hoping to gain by coming here. He reaches up slowly, wrapping his fingers around John’s and attempting to pry them gently from his wrist. John fights him, gripping tighter.

“Go with her,” Sherlock says, and he’s trying to be kind, but he can’t help the subtle note of accusation that creeps into his voice. “You chose her.”

John looks back at Mary. She is crying now—not much, but her eyes are wet, her arms pulling her cardigan tight around her body like it’s armour.

“I should choose her,” he says. “God help me. Choosing her would be the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” 

Sherlock looks down to where John’s fingers press into his skin. He takes a deep breath, holds it. Lets it out like a sigh. “You deserve to be happy.”

“Yes,” John agrees.

“I’m not stopping you.”

“Aren’t you?” John glances down, and Sherlock realises his hands have stopped working to separate John’s fingers from his wrist and are holding them there instead. He lets go, and the scene shifts around them. Mary fades, and the crowd vanishes. He and John are standing alone on the pavement, the blood at their feet fading. 

John stares over Sherlock’s shoulder. “She told me there were things I should have said to you.”

“Say them now.”

“No. Some things you can only say to a corpse.”

“But I’m not a corpse.” Sherlock resists the urge to touch him. He is thinking about John standing at his grave. What words could he say to a stone that he can’t say now? “I’m sorry I had to do it,” Sherlock says. “I know that doesn’t change it, but I am sorry.”

John snorts. “Sorry you’re not a corpse?”

“Maybe. Maybe it was better for you when I was dead.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.” A muscle in John’s jaw twitches, and he meets Sherlock’s gaze.

“I left for you,” says Sherlock, “but I came back for you, too.”

“Don’t say that either.”

“What can I say then? I don’t want to keep hurting you.” Sherlock throws his arms up, frustrated and guilty and a bit astonished at his own honesty. It _is_ honest, he feels the truth of the words even as he says them, but he suspects John’s psyche has affected his ability to filter himself. He takes a half step back, looks away from John. “I don’t know how to stop.”

John laughs, and it’s half a sigh. “Jesus, you really don’t get it do you?”

“This is your dream,” Sherlock spits, annoyed at his lack of control. “Make me understand. Tell me how to fix it.”

John closes his eyes. It’s raining now, a faint mist that slicks Sherlock’s cheeks. Moisture clings to John’s lashes.

“My dream,” he says. “Is it?”

_Careful now_ , Sherlock thinks. He says, “What else would it be?”

“I don’t know. I never know with you.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

John’s eyes open, and they are full of new clarity. “I missed you.” And it’s not as if he didn’t know, but hearing John say it startles him into silence. John is staring at his chest. “I miss things that never happened.”

Sherlock’s brows draw together in confusion. He studies John’s face for clues to his meaning. He’s so lost in this task that he doesn’t realise John is moving until his hands are on his chest, splayed over Sherlock’s coat. Sherlock freezes. 

John’s hands slide slowly upward, and Sherlock’s heart is pounding now, like his body knows something his brain does not. He glances between John’s hands and his face, needing to know what it is, what it _means_. He opens his mouth to ask, but nothing comes out. John’s hands reach his collar, flip it up so it brushes against the curls at the nape of his neck.

“I missed this,” John says. Sherlock wants to look him in the eye, but John’s gaze is fixed on his fingers. One thumb strays from the fabric of his collar and trails feather-light across the skin of Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock shivers.

John says, “You know so much.” 

Sherlock’s pulse is a liquid rush in his ears, and surely John will feel it. He needs to pull away, needs to close himself off. He wanted to know, but he didn’t want to know this—

“Did you know this?” John echoing his thoughts back to him, and Sherlock doesn’t know where his will ends and John’s begins.

John’s thumb traces the line of his jaw and trails upward, settling in the hollow under his ear. His other hand fists in Sherlock’s coat and pulls. Sherlock, paralysed, follows without fighting. He is thinking of Real John, who can hardly stand to be in the same room with him, even as Dream John’s touch slips effortlessly into intimacy. Every muscle in Sherlock’s body is taught. 

John’s eyes are on his lips now, which have parted slightly in bewilderment. “Did you deduce it? I never said, but I was sure you’d see.”

“Jo—”

But Sherlock can’t quite manage to form his name before John leans forward and kisses him. It takes a moment for it to register; John’s lips are soft and barely there, the sensory details hazy, filled in from John’s memories of other kisses with other people. Sherlock’s eyes are still open, unable to focus now John’s face is so close, his hands rising to John’s chest of their own accord. 

_Did you deduce it?_ Thrown by the suddenness of this, Sherlock can’t remember. But no—at the beginning, he had seen it, had known that John was attracted to him. But John himself had seemed unaware, and he had never once crossed a line, never asked, not even unconsciously, for anything more. So Sherlock had let it go, tucked it away in a corner of the mind palace reserved for things he had not yet decided whether or not to delete. 

John is still kissing him. Sherlock isn’t kissing back. His brain is racing, frantically examining the situation from every angle. John is dreaming—he must remember this. Dreams are not reality. There is truth here, but it might not be the truth it seems to be. Surely he would have known if John had really felt this, wanted this? The John who is stroking his cheek and pulling him closer, this is not the same John he left behind three years ago. But it might be the same John who refuses to look at him, might be the same John who flounders in barely-suppressed terror whenever Sherlock gets too close. He doesn’t have enough information to say for certain. 

Sherlock growls in frustration, and John’s eyes flutter, misinterpreting this noise for some kind of acquiescence. He surges forward, and there are not just lips now but _teeth_ , and Sherlock almost forgets himself, almost gives in to an animal urge deep in the core of his brain that is trying to stamp out his logical self. His mouth opens, and John’s tongue is there, curling around his own, wet and warm and seeking and— _No!_  

He pushes John away roughly, sending him reeling back. 

“Sher—?” The second syllable dies in John’s mouth, his eyes registering confusion and hurt—and the beginnings of suspicion. Hell.

“It isn’t real,” Sherlock says, to himself or to John, it doesn’t matter. His brain is tugging at him, pulling him back toward the door, and he takes a few stumbling steps backwards. Then John reaches out a hand to him, and Sherlock turns on his heel and flees.

The door to John’s mind slams shut behind him, and Sherlock lurches up from the sofa, breathless and disoriented. Reality asserts itself all at once, the early-morning chill in the air, the faint sound of dripping water from the bathroom sink, the ache in his neck from lying too long in the same position. Every muscle in his body is still whipcord tight, and he is surprised to find he’s exhausted. 

He makes his way through the darkened flat to his bedroom, shedding clothing as he goes, and collapses on his bed on top of the duvet. His thoughts ought to be a chaotic snarl, but freed from John’s dream, his mind seems to be avoiding the image and the uncomfortable questions it raises. But as the supercomputer of his logical brain shuts down, the animal part comes slyly awake. Sherlock falls asleep thinking of hands curled possessively in his coat. He worries his bottom lip with his tongue, chasing the ghost of John’s teeth.

 

§  


	3. Chapter 3

 

I wish you’d hold me when I turn my back  
_ (The less I give, the more I get back) _

§

Nine days pass, and still no active case. He badgers Lestrade for cold case files, but when he finally receives them, he clears the box in just under four hours: three of them solved, the other five impossible due to lack of evidence. He curses the original investigators for their incompetence, but they are not the real source of his ire.

The fact is, he can’t forget about John’s dream. After his initial panic subsides, his brain returns to it at odd times. While buying cigarettes, he finds himself absently stroking his coat, still feeling the insistent tug as John pulled him closer. One morning, drying his face after shaving, he catches his fingertips lingering at the skin of his throat, remember John’s touch. And the way he finds himself stroking his lips while he’s thinking—his body returning to the memory even when his mind is elsewhere. 

The only thing to do, really, is delete it. The whole thing, maybe even as far back as inviting John to the pub, maybe all the way back to his conversation with Molly. Better to forget, to erase it and be done. 

Except, of course, that he can’t. His brain is a computer, and true to form, it has safeguards against deleting necessary files. He can’t delete the experience because he can’t convince himself it’s irrelevant. There is something to figure out, something he must resolve before the data can be overwritten.

It isn’t the kiss itself that’s so important. Physical intimacy is not foreign to Sherlock, although he admits his approach to sexual matters is somewhat akin to his attitude toward eating; one does it because it’s necessary, because otherwise the hunger builds to a distraction and takes away from the work. Most of his partners have been pleasantly anonymous: tall, dark, and ultimately disappointing. But this is not some elegant, easily discarded stranger. This is _John_.

But he can disregard any uncomfortable emotions that arouses, because he knows it was only a dream—just the product of an overwrought unconsciousness. Definitely nothing more. And even if it were true, even if... _that_...was something John wanted, he would never act on it outside of a dream, Sherlock is certain. He has eighteen months’ worth of evidence to support this, eighteen months of shared living space—hell, just shared space in general; Sherlock has never felt much regard for personal space, and invading John’s had been part and parcel of his day-to-day routine. And while John had never seemed particularly bothered by this, he’d also never initiated or elicited those invasions. 

But Sherlock’s mind insists that this evidence is incomplete. The trouble is, John’s behaviour in the dream answers so many questions. John’s unwillingness to forgive him for faking his death has been difficult to accept, and now Sherlock begins to understand why. In the history of their friendship, John has forgiven every slight, every rudeness. He’s never so much as demanded an apology, save for the time in Dartmoor when he thought Sherlock was overlooking said friendship. John’s anger at Sherlock’s absence is logical. His feelings of betrayal, of hurt, these make sense. But John also knows his motivations—Sherlock was acting in John’s best interest, and Sherlock is not being prideful when he notes that this ought to be a mitigating factor.

So why refuse to welcome him back? Why, unless…

His mobile rings, startling him from his thoughts. He peers down at the number. John. His heart trips over itself as it trebles in tempo. John hasn’t phoned, hasn’t initiated any sort of contact since Sherlock returned. He wouldn’t start now unless something had changed. 

A ghost of soft lips against his own, and Sherlock presses his lips together to banish the sensation.Logic overrides emotion, and he takes a calming breath. If the dream were the catalyst, John would have acted sooner.But John has a larger problem, the reason he agreed to meet Sherlock in the first place—Mary. Sherlock answers the phone. 

“John?” He is pleased to find his voice is steady, if a bit strained. 

“Yeah, Sherlock, hi.” A pause, into which Sherlock can think of nothing to say. 

John coughs. “You...uh, you okay?”

“You called me, John.”

“No, of course. I mean, you’re right. I just…Look, I’m sorry about the other night.”

“The other night?” Sherlock echoes. His fingers tug at the hair curling against his neck, remembering the way John turned up his coat collar. 

“At the pub, I mean,” says John.

“Oh.” 

“I was rude. I mean, you were—well, I’m not saying you were right, but I know...I know you meant well.”

“You’re calling to apologise?”

“No. Uh, no. Not exactly. I...Jesus.” John laughs into the phone, a breathless sort of giggle that has little relation to amusement. “It’s hard to say it, isn’t it? Like saying it makes it true.”

_Did you deduce it?_ Sherlock pushes the thought aside with a wave of his hand, annoyed. 

“Mary,” he says.

“Yeah, how did you…?” John sighs. “Never mind. Of course you know.” Exhaustion is thick in his voice. Exhaustion and something else, a hurt that Sherlock hasn’t heard since his own reappearance in John’s life.

And suddenly he knows exactly what’s coming—but John needs to say it, and Sherlock will let him. He grips his phone tighter. “Tell me.”

“She’s...Sherlock, I found an e-mail.” He draws a shaky breath. “A lot of them, actually.”

His voice cracks on the last word, and Sherlock waits while he composes himself. “There’s someone else,” John finally manages. 

A heavy pause, and Sherlock wonders what normal people say in these situations. “How long?” he ventures.

“Not sure. A couple of months, maybe? He’s—” John cuts off again, and Sherlock can almost see the muscle in his jaw twitching as he bites back emotion. 

_Stupid, Sherlock. Say something—fix this. Fix_ him _._ But he has no words. “I’m sorry,” he says, feeling helpless.

“Yeah. Yeah, I just...I’m not sure what to do.”

“You’ve spoken to her?”

“She didn’t deny it. She was...God, sad, I guess. Apologised a lot. For hurting me.” The last words twist into a sarcastic laugh. 

“John…” Sherlock doesn’t know what to say.

John’s laughter dies. “No, look. I’m sorry for calling. I just...I don’t know. I picked up my phone and...this was just the first number I dialled.”

Sherlock’s fingers drift to his lips again, which have curled slightly upward at the corners. “It’s fine,” he says softly. “Do you—” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “You can always stay here. If you need to.”

There is a long silence. Sherlock stares at the sitting room wall, his eyes tracing the bullet holes in the wide yellow grin of the spray-painted happy face.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” John says at last, and disappointment blooms in Sherlock’s chest.

“Oh.”

“I can’t, Sherlock. I—”

“You don’t need to explain,” Sherlock interrupts, irritated at his own vulnerability, more irritated that he can’t seem to hide it.

John sighs into the phone, and the sigh takes the shape of Sherlock’s name. Sherlock says nothing.

“Christ,” John mutters, and then, “I’d better go.”

“John—”

“No, I—I’ll phone later, yeah?”

“John, you don’t have to—”

The line goes dead, and Sherlock lowers his mobile slowly, his lips a flat line of frustration. 

He’s partly upset that John hung up, but more upset by the fact that his hypothesis is wrong. The dream—it wasn’t an anomaly. John said he hadn’t really meant to call. But in a state of distress, his unconscious mind had dialled Sherlock. The act speaks volumes. Whatever John’s behaviour toward him, part of his mind still recognises Sherlock as a friend, still sees him as a source of comfort. He thinks he wants away from Sherlock, but his mind returns to him like a homing pigeon. 

And Sherlock knows he won’t be satisfied until he finds out what John really wants.

 

§

He waits until early morning this time. John is on edge, emotionally drained. Most people in his condition would welcome the escape of sleep, but John’s insomnia is always worse after an emotional blow. According to his therapist’s files, he hardly slept for weeks after Sherlock’s fall. But John is not Sherlock, and his body rarely manages to stay awake for an entire night—Sherlock remembers finding John asleep at his desk, in the back of Lestrade’s car, even, on one memorable occasion, bent over a body bag waiting to be loaded into an ambulance. So it’s a waiting game, really: Sherlock’s own impatience versus John’s anxious energy.

Which is why it is nearly five in the morning before Sherlock risks visiting John’s dreams. He makes himself more comfortable this time, stretching himself out on his bed and propping several pillows under his head. Then he closes his eyes and find John’s door in his mind.

The door is unlocked but heavy, and it takes a bit of extra mental muscle before Sherlock can work his way in. 

Inside, it’s dark. Faint lights and colours flash around him, but nothing coalesces into an identifiable image. _NREM-cycle. Fragmented dreams, scattered emotions._ This state is useless for Sherlock’s purposes—but he doesn’t pull away. The blackness around him pulses gently, and after a few moments Sherlock recognises that it is keeping time with John’s heartbeat. The strong, steady rhythm lulls him into relaxation, his consciousness bleeding at the edges, soaking into John’s. He wonders if his own mind is this peaceful at rest. It’s difficult to imagine, but this state is a biological necessity, so Sherlock supposes it must be so. He studies the darkness around him and finds it is not as complete as he first thought: in all directions, countless filaments glow very dimly, interwoven in a pattern so mathematically breathtaking that most minds would find it easier to perceive as random. 

The flashes of light occur along these filaments, and Sherlock realises he is observing the hardware of John’s brain at work: electrical impulses carrying chemical signals across a vast network of axons and dendrites. _Beautiful_ , he thinks, and several nearby filaments fire all at once: _a woman applying lipstick, a faint smell of perfume, a feminine laugh, a sickening loneliness_. The cocktail of sense and emotion and image is there and gone, washing over him like a swell in the sea, lifting him briefly before letting him go, receding back into the darkness. Sherlock reels a bit.

_John?_ More pulses, even closer now: streaks of red across a pale brow, a cold wrist under strong fingers, the smell of Lady Grey tea and gun smoke and blood. Raw grief shudders through him, interlaced with anger. Sherlock struggles to ride out the wave of feeling, torn between guilt and curiosity. John’s mind recognises him, he is almost sure.

He drifts closer to the nearest filament, aware that the images flashing in the distance are taking on a more uniform pattern, their colours starting to mirror one another as they become more frequent. 

_John_ , he thinks again, and lets himself melt into the ensuing storm of light. Sherlock sees his own face, the bright red dot of a laser sight centred on his forehead, and fear grips him low and tight, hardening into fierce resolve. Not his own feelings, no, but they resonate with him. He felt the same fear when he knew a sniper held John in his sights, the same steely certainty that he would die to protect him. Another image: Sherlock with shorter hair, a meekly downcast gaze, newly returned from the dead and throwing himself on the mercy of one John Watson. It’s pain he feels this time, sharper than grief, deeper, and the sweet rush of relief that accompanies it only serves to intensify the ache. This one spins away quickly, as though John’s brain does not like to dwell on it, and is replaced by one John must deem safer: Sherlock in his tartan dressing gown, a smoking beaker in one hand and his hair in disarray. Frustration fizzes through Sherlock this time, and a brighter sensation that he isn’t sure he recognises. The image is gone before he can analyse it properly.

The next image lingers, stretching and sharpening around him, the sitting room of 221b rendered in such exquisite detail that for a moment Sherlock wonders if he’s somehow pulled his own mind palace into the confines of John’s thoughts. He is facing the windows, and rain is drizzling down outside. Individual drops meander slowly down the panes of glass. He turns slowly in place, scanning the room. The desk between the windows is covered in neatly arranged bee carcasses, several of which are already pinned into a display box. Handwritten labels bearing Latin names are littered among them—a work in progress. Several bills and receipts are scattered about the floor, obviously cleared off the desk to make room for the bee display. 

A fire pops cheerily in the fireplace. His skull is on the mantlepiece, just below the Cluedo board he pinned to the wall with his letter opener. His violin sits propped against his chair, the case open, as if he has just finished playing.

“I forgot what a mess this place was.” 

Sherlock jumps a little, spinning around to see John seated in his armchair, sipping tea out of his RAMC mug. 

He can’t help the tiny smile that tugs at his lips. “And yet you choose to remember it like this. If it bothers you, clean it up.”

John frowns, considering this, but then his brow smooths and he sips his tea again dismissively. His other hand gestures vaguely at the room. “Your mess. You clean it.”

Sherlock’s folds himself into his armchair instead, closing his violin case and laying it across his lap. The chair seems to mould to him as he sits, and Sherlock takes a moment to appreciate that John’s mind wants him here: the room is almost painfully cozy and domestic, the details immaculate, right down to the comforting clutter—all reflecting Sherlock’s taste, Sherlock’s habits. John stares at the fire. Loneliness hangs so thick in the air that Sherlock can taste it, stale and salty, at odds with the warmth of the room. 

“I thought about following you off that building,” John says abruptly. Sherlock blanches a little, his fingers flexing against the arms of his chair, but John doesn’t seem to notice. His voice is clinical, reflective. “If not for her, I might have.” 

“Then I am eternally grateful to her.”

John laughs. “Eternally grateful to my cheating wife. Cheers.” He tips his mug toward Sherlock and sips, his lips twisted into a wry smile.

“I don’t know what to say, John.”

“Not a lot _to_ say, I guess. It’s done.”

The fire crackles and sparks.

“Unforgiving,” mutters Sherlock. It’s observation, not admonishment, but John looks up sharply. The staleness in the air is replaced with a quivering tension. Sherlock remembers the oddly fuzzy frustration John felt when his mind produced memories of the detective: had that feeling been let off its leash after a few pints, Sherlock suspects it might feel something like this. He doesn’t know what to name it, but it’s like being locked in a room with a predator. A hungry one.

“I don’t owe her forgiveness,” he says.

“No.” Sherlock searches John’s face. “But it isn’t her you’re angry with.” He can see it, pieces beginning to fall into place, and if he can just study it long enough, he’s certain he can discover the answer: why John won’t forgive Mary, why John won’t forgive Sherlock, why John won’t forgive _himself,_ and why this damnable _feeling_ won’t stop—

His thoughts pull up short, because suddenly John is standing over him, leaning down to place his hands on the arms of Sherlock’s chair. The tension ( _hunger_ ) is stronger now, a thread stretched taught between them, fraying under the knife-line of John’s mouth, the keen edge of his gaze. The detective leans back instinctively. They are eye level, but John seems to loom over him. 

“No,” John says, his voice almost lethally casual. “I’m not doing this.”

“Doing what?” Sherlock’s voice comes out thinner than he intended. He sits up straighter, resisting the urge to crawl farther back in the chair.

“You are not going to...to bloody _deduce_ me right now.”

“I told you, I can’t turn it on and off.”

“Then just.” John leans forward. “Shut.” The thread of tension pulls impossibly tighter, so tight Sherlock thinks he could put bow to it and play, an etude of illogical desire. “Up.”

And Sherlock sees it coming even before it happens, the millisecond between impulse and action expanding into an eternity. John is close—so close, and memory or instinct makes Sherlock lick his lips, and damn him, John _sees._ Sees and _smirks_. The animal part of Sherlock’s brain wants very much to bite him; the logical part only just grasps the reins enough to soften the blow. Just that, the stretched splinter of a second. Then the thread snaps.

The ensuing chaos is more collision than kiss, Sherlock drunk on the elixir of base emotion John’s brain is brewing. Surely it’s John—Sherlock has never felt this sort of desperate need to take someone apart and then piece them back together again. There’s a slow-burning rage, a wild-eyed terror shimmering in the air around them, in the sharp-sweet pain of John’s teeth at against his lower lip, and Sherlock can’t tell anymore where John’s feelings end and his own begin. Then John licks at the spot he’s just bitten, tongue sweeping into his mouth like it belongs there, and Sherlock deems everything else irrelevant. 

_It’s just a dream_ , he reminds himself, but Christ, John’s brain has filled in the details admirably— Sherlock’s hands sweat where they are dug into the leather of the chair, and he reaches for John’s shirt instead, the fabric sliding over an impressive facsimile of muscle and flesh. John sags a little at the touch, a solid weight in Sherlock’s arms, a smothering heat that threatens to overwhelm him. Sherlock pulls back, leaning his forehead against John’s and gasping for breath. The curls at his hairline are plastered to his skin, damp with sweat.

“This isn’t real,” he whispers, not entirely sure which of them he’s reminding.

John turns his head slightly, his breath humid against Sherlock’s cheek. “You’re always saying that,” he sighs, bemused and resigned all at once. “As if I didn’t know.”

Sherlock tenses. If John knows that he is spying on his dreams—( _bit past spying, really, isn’t it?_ )—but no, he can’t know. If he knew, he’d be furious, and he’s far from that; John is cupping his face with one hand, his thumb idly resting against Sherlock’s lower lip. 

“As if the real you would ever let me do this,” he says. 

A brief surge of relief as he realises his secret is still safe: John knows he’s dreaming, but he doesn’t believe Sherlock is anything more than an extension of his own dream. The relief fades, however, as he registers the faint bitterness in John’s voice.

He frowns. “You sound awfully certain of that,” he says, “for someone with no empirical evidence.” Never mind that he himself would have been just as certain, except that when faced with the situation, he had, in fact, pretty much let John do whatever he liked.

John doesn’t move away, but there is suddenly space between them. Sherlock feels bereft, and then immediately agitated. Pulled to the surface by the hurricane force of John’s emotions, Sherlock’s own feelings are a clouded, roiling mass that he can’t make sense of. It’s inconvenient, and supremely annoying.

“Evidence,” John echoes with a hollow laugh. “God, maybe I’m an idiot after all. I mean, it’s the first rule of Sherlock Holmes—no one gets to Sherlock Holmes. Not your area, right?” The eyebrow he raises at Sherlock is both condescending and self-deprecating. _I should know better_ , the look says. _And so should you_.    

In spite of himself, Sherlock feels indignant. “I’m not…” He flounders momentarily, casting about for the right words. “I’m not _ignorant_ , John.”

John seems to consider this. In the mirror above the fireplace, Sherlock sees a fleeting vision: himself, twined ridiculously around the vague shape of a man whose features won’t quite coalesce—he catches glimpses of Lestrade, of Moriarty, Christ—of someone who looks shockingly like _Mycroft_. He suppresses a shudder and asserts his own memories; the man’s face settles into delicate, vulpine features—a sardonic smile, fine dark fringe over a sweeping, aristocratic brow.   

John studies the image, frowning, then glances sidelong at Sherlock. “Yeah, I suppose that would be the type you’d go for.”

Sherlock shrugs, the air around him prickly with their mingled irritation. “I’m thrilled you find me so predictable,” he says flatly.

John seems to ignore him, glaring once more at the shadowy tableau in the mirror. “He looks a ponce,” he says at last. “Fitting.”

“Oh, because only someone unbearable could stand to be in my company?” Sherlock doesn’t remember standing, but he’s suddenly toe-to-toe with John, who still won’t look at him, and _God_ , who gave any man the right to be this damn infuriating, even in his own dreams?

“Because you wouldn’t let anyone get close if you thought you might actually want to keep them around,” John offers. It’s so matter-of-fact it sets Sherlock’s teeth on edge.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growls.

Now John does turn to face him, blue eyes shaded nearly black. “And yet, you haven’t actually said I’m wrong.” His smile is tight, drawing hard lines into the flesh beside his mouth. “Never known you to miss an opportunity.”

Sherlock is nearly quivering with—well, he isn’t sure what with. He’s felt something similar in the dark bedrooms of dark strangers, a sort of reckless physical need, but this is sharper, edged with something like rage or panic, a heat that slices through him, white-hot, leaving him torn. He wants to push John away, he wants to punch him, he wants—God, he wants to devour him.

Behind them, the door to the flat creaks open. Sherlock starts at the noise, but John is calm: if he can feel Sherlock’s wildfire energy, he gives no sign of it.

“Go on, then,” John says, nodding toward the door. “It’s a stupid dream anyway. Being the exception to a rule.” He shakes his head. “ _I’ve just got one_.” He snorts. “Guess I let it go a bit to my head, eh?” 

“You’re wrong.” Sherlock’s voice comes out louder than he intended, wrenched with the effort of saying the words, and he can’t say what’s making him so angry—that John believes Sherlock can’t give him what he needs, or that John may be absolutely right. “I could do it,” he says, desperate to convince them both. “I could...be with someone. Someone I didn’t hate.”

John’s smile flickers, the lines around his mouth softening a bit. Sherlock's eyes follow the movement involuntarily. 

The silence is loud between them.  

“Don’t,” John says after a moment. He shakes his head slightly, and Sherlock can see he’s going to shrug it off, he’s going to dismiss it, he’s— 

“Oh, Christ, _sod this_.” Sherlock balls his fists into John’s shirt and pulls, his mouth finding John’s and kissing away the last traces of his bitter grin. For the space of three heartbeats, John resists, a tiny noise of disbelief or protest rising from his throat—but Sherlock licks his way into his mouth, and the noise retreats again, dropping into John’s chest and reemerging as an eager moan.

And it’s John, God, this is _John,_ and that noise shouldn’t be so thrilling, except it _is_. It crawls into his veins like a drug and Sherlock can’t get enough of it. His hands are shaking and his heart is pounding and everything in him says that John is right, he can’t do this, not with someone he cares about—but he can’t stop himself. He wants to give John what he needs, wants to take what he needs in return.

_It’s only a dream_ , he thinks, and it’s a poor excuse, but he’s lost now—lost in the feel of John, the gunpowder-tea-toast-fireplace taste of him, in the storm of jumbled chemicals and hormones and memories. John's hands tangle in his hair, tug at his curls in a way that would hurt if this were real, wrenching his head back so John can press the flat of his tongue against Sherlock’s carotid artery before latching on with lips and teeth and oh— 

“ _Christ_ ,” Sherlock says, the word a hiss of breath over clenched teeth. 

John is pushing him, guiding him, and he stumbles backward until his back connects with a wall. His mental map of the flat protests that there ought not be a wall here, but obviously John’s mind has need of one—and he certainly puts it to good use, immediately crowding Sherlock against it, pinning him in place in a three-point hold: his mouth on Sherlock’s throat and one hand firmly on each of Sherlock’s hips. John wedges his knee between Sherlock’s legs, relaxing his grip enough to let the detective’s weight sag against his thigh. 

The sudden friction makes Sherlock gasp, and he realises he is painfully, desperately hard. He groans John’s name, and John laughs into the hollow of his neck, dropping a kiss there before pulling back to look at him.

“Tell me what you want,” John says. His hands don’t wait for an answer, dropping to cup Sherlock through his trousers, his palm running up and down his length.

“Yes,” says Sherlock, unable to come up with anything more eloquent as his mental faculties short out under the onslaught of sensation.

John nips at his jaw, and suddenly Sherlock’s flies are undone and John is stroking him through his pants. His hips jerk involuntarily.

“Is it okay?” John’s voice is earnest beneath the lust, and he kisses Sherlock as he strokes him. “Is it okay like this? Tell me. Jesus, tell me what to do.” 

Sherlock’s throat works, but he can only manage another moan. His hands are at John’s waist, then questing lower, until he finds an answering hardness. John shudders against him.

“Sherlock, please.”

Sherlock’s fingers work blindly, helped along by his own experience and John’s eager imagination. John is hot and heavy in his hand, already leaking precome. Sherlock gives him one firm stroke. 

“Oh, God.” John’s eyes squeeze shut, his rhythm on Sherlock’s cock faltering, and Sherlock takes advantage of his distraction to slip out of his grasp, dropping to his knees. John doesn’t protest.

Sherlock leans forward, pressing his nose into the joint between John’s leg and torso, breathing in the scent of him through damp fabric. Even in the dream, John smells of sex—and faintly of gun oil and cinnamon and his shampoo, the way he smells in all of Sherlock’s memories. And while his body responds wholeheartedly to the musky odour of arousal, Sherlock’s mind is nearly drunk on the ordinary John-scent beneath, on the comfort of him, the familiarity of him. When he pauses to look up, he can see the dream John looking down at him, all wide-blown pupils and grasping hands. And then, for just a moment, a flash of another John, wrecked and terrified, and Sherlock closes his eyes and tries to ignore the answering fear that threatens to overtake him, shutting off his thoughts and just moving.

He wraps one hand around the base of John’s cock and leans forward, letting his lips enfold the head. John’s breathing stutters, his hips thrusting instinctively, and Sherlock doesn’t fight him, letting him push forward, granting him control. John’s fingers thread their way into his hair, holding Sherlock steady as he fucks his mouth. It’s too fast, too rough to be tender, but that’s easier for Sherlock anyway. He knows how to let himself be used, and for the first time in a long time, John is an open book. Sherlock can read what he wants in every sigh and shiver, every dark desire broadcast through his neural network in brilliant, blinding stereo. This isn’t art, it’s science: deducing John’s fantasies and fulfilling them. There’s no need to get his heart involved, not in a dream. The fear at the back of his mind tugs at him, begs him to stop, but Sherlock fights it, taking John deeper instead. 

“Jesus,” John mutters. The hand not gripping Sherlock’s hair is pressed against the wall to keep his knees from buckling. “I needed—needed you. For so long. Needed _this_.” 

Sherlock grunts in response, breath coming faster now, and John’s words fan the fire within him. _Too much_ , his brain says. _Too close, too dangerous_. He is palming himself with one hand as John’s pace increases, thinking that he can fight fear with pure animal lust. John is close; Sherlock can see it in the faint quivering of his thigh muscles, taste it in the salty tang of fluid on his tongue. Just a moment more, and he’ll have proved himself, that he can do this, that he can— 

“God, Sherlock. Oh, God, _fuck_.” 

John’s bad leg gives way, trembling wildly as he thrusts into Sherlock’s mouth, and then he is coming and coming, endlessly, until Sherlock can’t swallow any more and it is spilling over his lips, smearing between them. Tears are leaking from the corners of Sherlock’s eyes, and John is suddenly boneless, flopping over him, falling to the floor beside him. 

Sherlock’s hands are shaking. John’s head lolls against his shoulder, damp and heavy.  He thinks about turning to kiss his forehead; he thinks about shrugging him off, about pushing him away. 

“Hey,” says John, and his hand is fumbling at Sherlock’s thigh. “Hey, let me—”

His fingers close over Sherlock’s cock, which gives an undeniable throb of appreciation, but Sherlock’s brain registers a corresponding spike of terror. 

“Sherlock.” John’s voice sounds far away, and the room seems to shrink around him. “Come on, I want to—”

But the room slips away, taking John with it, and Sherlock opens his eyes in his own bedroom.

He is shivering, and it takes him a moment to realise that he is drenched in sweat. Drenched in sweat, and oh God, hard—so hard it _aches_. He dips his hand into his pyjama bottoms and touches himself, and just the sensation of skin on over-sensitised skin makes him cry out so loudly that he bites the back of his hand. 

He can still smell John, still taste him at the back of his throat, and his usually perfunctory strokes are lingering now, his own fingers tracing the paths that John’s followed up and down his length. When he finally comes, the wordless cry that tumbles from his lips sounds very much like John’s name.

 

§

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay...work is absolutely insane this year and it's draining all my energy, creative or otherwise. But I have no intention of abandoning this fic. I would like to take this opportunity to shower my beautiful, patient beta, **agnesanutter** , with expensive wine and imported chocolate and skeezy up-skirt cell phone videos of Martin Freeman.

 

  
Your hands can heal  
_(Your hands can bruise)_

_§_

Sherlock’s mobile is ringing. Has been ringing for some time, he realises as he comes groggily awake. He fumbles beneath his pillow, barely cracking one eye open to check the caller ID. Lestrade. He jams the phone to his ear, croaking, “What do you want?”

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been phoning for an hour.”

“I was sleeping.”

“Ha!” Lestrade pauses, apparently registering the thickness in Sherlock’s voice. “Wait, you’re serious. Jesus, are you alright?”

_Is it okay? Is it okay like this?_ John’s voice drifts up through the still-blurred line between dream and reality. Sherlock shakes his head roughly to dismiss it, rolling onto his back and grimacing when his pyjama bottoms stick to him unpleasantly.

“I’m fine,” he lies. The clock on his bedside table reads 10:07 AM. 

“Yeah, you sound it,” Lestrade says sarcastically. “Anything I should be worried about?”

“Why don’t you save us all time and just ask if I’ve reacquainted myself with narcotics?”

“Well if you want to be cute about it, I can always have some of my boys come by…”

“I’m not on drugs,” Sherlock snaps. “Christ, haven’t you anything better to do than monitor my sleep schedule?”

“As a matter of fact I do.”

Sherlock sits up, suddenly fully awake. “Where?”

“Oh, not even going to ask what it is first? I thought you had some sort of system—nothing less than a seven, something like that.”

“It’s obviously less than a seven if you can afford to waste time chatting, but I need a case. Just tell me where.”

“Paddington Station. Found the purse of that socialite who went missing a few months back.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.” 

Sherlock doesn’t even bother to let the water heat up before sluicing himself off beneath the shower spray and dressing. He leaves any thoughts of John behind in the flat, piled on the floor with his pyjamas, a heap of uncomfortable implications and things better left unmentioned.

§

When he arrives at the station, Lestrade looks him up and down.

“Alright, then?”

Sherlock waves him away in irritation. He didn’t manage to glance in the mirror before he left, so he has no idea what Lestrade is seeing. “I’m fine,” he snaps. “The evidence?”

Lestrade stares at him for another moment or two, opening his mouth as if to ask another question, then seems to think better of it and turns away. Sherlock follows him.

After twenty seconds of looking through the purse, Sherlock knows the bare bones of the case: the socialite was murdered the night of her disappearance, and the purse has been in the killer’s possession ever since. Lestrade is baffled when he informs him that the killer is female. He begins citing statistics, and Sherlock casually reminds him that his statistics have left the case unsolved for months and shows him the two tubes of lipstick in the victim’s purse—two different colours, two different patterns of wear: two different women using the purse. 

“But surely she’d dispose of anything tying her to the murder,” Lestrade protests. 

“She thought she was being clever. She knew the victim, but not well enough that you’d be suspicious of her in your initial investigation. As long as she was careful, you’d have no reason to go through her things. If she got rid of the bag, you might find it.” 

“So she decides the safest place for it is in her possession?”

Sherlock tilts his head in acknowledgement. “Falling back on your statistics, the safest place for it was probably the bottom of the Thames, but people do silly things under pressure. Besides, she clearly had some kind of emotional attachment to the victim. Maybe she couldn’t let go of this last piece of her.”

“Emotional connection?” Lestrade echoes.

“The lipstick. She didn’t just keep the purse; she carried it, used it—at least once. It’s a knockoff designer bag, not exactly unique, but it’s still a risky move, and that spells sentiment.”

“Right, so we’re looking for a female with...what, some sort of crush on her?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and turns back to the evidence, swabbing one of the lipsticks and sliding the cotton swab into a plastic cover. He repeats the process with the other lipstick, then sets the purse aside and sits back on his heels, glancing up smugly at Lestrade.

“Oh God,” mutters Lestrade. “I know what that look means. Go on then.”

“First lipstick is pink—playful, young, a high end brand. That will be your victim. Fits with the knockoff bag and the victim’s age. Second lipstick is a much less flamboyant shade. Cheap brand, lipstick’s nearly entirely used. That says sensible, pragmatic. A little older maybe, a little wiser. Owns a cat, ginger tabby—there’s hair on the inside of the purse, but not inside the wallet, which means the hair got in after the purse was out of the victim’s possession. Had a connection with the victim, but not one the police thought worth investigating, probably a work colleague. Would have come off as quiet and unassuming, demurely upset at the victim’s disappearance, but not over the top.”

Lestrade’s mouth is hanging open. He makes a visible effort to close it.

“Well?” prompts Sherlock. “Is this ringing any bells, inspector?”

“I’ll...I’ll check the files.”

“Fine. I’ll be at the lab doing the rest of your job for you.”

He pockets the evidence he’s collected and turns on his heel, feeling like himself for the first time in weeks. 

§

Molly places a mug of coffee on the worktop next to the microscope Sherlock is using. He glances at it—black, two sugars, and Molly certainly knows what he likes, but it doesn’t make the canteen coffee taste any better. He ignores the mug.  

“Got anything yet?” Molly asks.

He studies the slide. “No.”

“Really? You’ve been at it for hours.”

“Yes.”

“And still nothing?”

Sherlock does look up now, just long enough to spare her a withering glance. She deflates. “Sorry, I know. You said.” She hovers, biting her lips. “It’s just—”

“Molly.” Sherlock’s tone is a warning.

She gives a frustrated little squeak and turns away. “Right,” she says. “If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.”

“I won’t.” He turns back to the microscope, missing her flinch as his parting words catch her on her way out. He’s vaguely aware that John would chastise him for being rude, but he’s only being honest. He doesn’t have time to entertain Molly, and it’s not as though she’s going to spot something he hasn’t.

Sherlock frowns and concentrates on the slide. There has to be _something_. He’s processing the swabs he took from the lipsticks for DNA, but that will take hours, maybe days. The cat hair is a clue, but it’s not conclusive, not without a suspect to link it to. He’s studying some of the grit he collected from the liner of the purse: crumbled face powder, a few skin flakes, and ground apricot kernel, of all things. This last is what’s troubling him. It’s his best clue, he’s sure of it, but he can’t make it mean anything. Apricot seeds are poisonous in high quantities, but poison is not a weapon for a crime of passion. So what then? 

The door to the lab opens behind him, and he rolls his eyes. “Back so soon? I told you, you have nothing I could possibly need.”

“Oh,” says a familiar voice. Sherlock spins around so quickly he nearly falls off his stool, an entire day’s supply of suppressed emotion suddenly flooding his bloodstream with nauseating waves of adrenaline. His throat constricts, and it takes a conscious effort to swallow.

John is studying his hands, seemingly unaware of the effect his entrance has had on Sherlock. He is smiling—a tight, barely-there sort of smile that still manages to be genuine, like he wants to be annoyed but can’t quite bring himself to it. He screws his lips into a thoughtful little moue. “I’m guessing you thought I was Molly. And I wish I could say it’s appalling that you’d speak to her that way, but we both know it’s really not.”

Sherlock _is_ appalled, mostly at his powers of observation, which have chosen to focus on the way John has clasped his tongue between his teeth. He fixes his eyes determinedly on a point near John’s forehead and clears his throat. 

“She’s downstairs, if that’s who you want,” he says. His voice sounds nearly normal. A bit breathless, but he can put that down to surprise. He forces himself to relax his shoulders, his spine, the corners of his mouth. 

John tilts his head to one side and casually ignores Sherlock’s comment. “Case on?” he asks, nodding at the microscope. 

“Homicide,” Sherlock confirms. “Female killer, crime of passion.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“But you wouldn’t be in such a state if it was that straightforward.”

Sherlock immediately stiffens. “What state? I’m not in a state.”

John snorts. “You’re never this tense when you have a case unless you’ve gotten stuck. And I’m assuming no one’s told you your shirt is buttoned wrong and your hair looks like a bird tried to make a nest of it.”

Sherlock can feel a faint blush creeping into his cheeks, and his need for precision overrides the jumble of emotions crowding his thoughts as he blurts, “Fine deduction about my agitation, but I got dressed before the case began. My appearance is irrelevant.” He does, however, run a hand through his hair before reaching down to rebutton his shirt. No wonder Lestrade was staring at him this morning. 

“In that case,” says John, moving toward him, “I have to assume the case was so fascinating you couldn’t wait to get out the door.” 

He glances down at the worktop, and Sherlock feels an almost absurd inclination to cover his work. He’s been wanting John back on a case with him for ages. Why balk at the opportunity now? He sucks in his breath to sigh and immediately realises why, as the gesture earns him a lungful of John-scented air. Sherlock releases the breath in a rush, turning back to the microscope. He takes several seconds to collect himself.

This is so wrong. He never ought to have meddled in John’s dreams. How much easier if he didn’t know...if he didn’t _feel_ …

And John? What about him? Whatever his motivations, that fact remains that John cut Sherlock out of his life, not the other way around. He has no right to waltz back in now, just because his marriage has fallen apart and he has nowhere else to turn. 

Cold fury replaces the rising heat in Sherlock’s gut. He forces himself to take another deep breath, orders his senses to ignore the comforting scent invading his space, sharing his air. 

John is studying the display screens nearby. “Apricot seeds? Not another gardener like poor Mr. Woodward, I hope.” Sherlock is still practicing his breathing and says nothing. “Well?” John prompts. “Fill us in.”

Sherlock needlessly adjusts the knobs of the microscope. “John—” He’s not quite sure what to say. He glances sideways at his former friend. This close, he can see that John’s parade rest isn’t as casual as it appears; his jaw is tight, his shoulders stiff. His knuckles are white where his hands are clasped behind his back.

John’s discomfort eases some of Sherlock’s own, and Sherlock tries to make his voice gentle. “Why are you here?”

John’s eyelid twitches, his easy smile slipping a bit. He glances around the room. “Just got off work. Thought I’d stop by, you know…” Sherlock catches his eyes, and John trails off, sighing. “Jesus, Sherlock, does it matter?”

In spite of his efforts, the cold in Sherlock’s belly seeps into his voice. “It does if you’re only here because you can’t go home to Mary.”

John makes a noise like all the air has been sucked from his lungs at once. He tears his gaze away from Sherlock’s and purses his lips. “That’s not…” He shakes his head minutely. “No.”

“I think,” Sherlock says, and the icy tendrils wend their way around his chest, “you were my friend once.”

That brings John’s attention back to him. “Of course I was.” His eyebrows are drawn together in indignation. “How can you...no, I suppose I know how you can ask that. But honestly, you have to know—”

“I’ll tell you what I know. Friends protect people; your words, not mine. And you did that. You protected me. You protected me, and I tried to protect you, too. I did what I had to do, what I thought you would _want_ me to do, and you have never forgiven me for it.”

“Hold on. You can’t honestly think I’d want you to lie about committing suicide and let me believe you were dead for years. God, Sherlock. What you did...it nearly killed me.”

_I thought about following you off that building._ Sherlock shoves the memory roughly away, swallowing against the cinnamon-tea-gun oil taste that tries to accompany it. He wraps cold anger around him like armour. Whatever John feels, whatever he dreams, he has chosen to share none of it with Sherlock. What he _has_ chosen to do is shut him out, cut him off from the only friendship Sherlock ever cared to cultivate, put him aside for a more suitable companion the moment he was able.

“And you’ve chosen the perfect revenge,” Sherlock says. “Terminating said friendship, dashing off to get married.” 

“My getting married had nothing to do with you.”

“Perhaps. But your marital woes have everything to do with you being here now.” He studies the slide under the microscope lens without seeing it. As much as he wants to make his point, watching the hurt on John’s face is not as satisfying as he’d imagined.  

“Sherlock…”

“Go, John.” 

John doesn’t move, and from the corner of his eye Sherlock can see his mouth hanging open dumbly. He forces himself to meet his gaze. 

“I won’t be your consolation prize,” he says softly. John closes his mouth, swallowing hard, and Sherlock practically watches the wall go up behind his eyes. 

“Fine.” A muscle in his jaw twitches as he clenches his teeth. “Fine, yeah. I get it.”

Sherlock wants to feel victorious as John executes a precise military turn and marches stiffly away. He wants his fury to make him strong, the ice in his veins numbing a deeper ache. But as the door swings shut behind John, his shoulders slump forward, and he sags against the worktop, feeling empty. 

_Better this way,_ he thinks. _Alone was always better. Nothing to distract from the work_. 

But his vision swims oddly when he tries to focus on the slide again. He blinks rapidly and takes a sip of the now-cold coffee Molly left for him, swallowing hard against the lump that rises suddenly in his throat.

§

Of course, in the end the case is simple. Once he manages to clamp down on his wayward emotions, Sherlock’s mind latches on to John’s wild, off-hand conjecture about the killer being a gardener. She’s not, of course—a serious gardener would handle their seeds with care, not crush them into oblivion, not to mention they’d be wearing gloves, negating the possibility of transferring said seeds onto other personal belongings. His scientific sensitivities are summarily offended by John’s carefree leaps in logic, but he can’t deny that the man’s idiocy often helps shake free the knots in Sherlock’s own intelligence. The detective dives deeper into his internal database, accessing all possible uses of apricot kernel, and turns up the following list:

1\. an ineffective but still occasionally implemented holistic cancer treatment (dubious; the socialite’s medical records indicate perfect health, apart from a hastily treated STI)

2\. an ingredient in baked goods, including amaretto liqueur and some biscotti

3\. an exfoliant, often found in skincare products

By the time Lestrade phones with an extended list of the victim’s personal contacts, Sherlock immediately asks him to narrow it down to food service workers and anyone in the beauty industry. A business card in her flat leads them to a stall in the Portobello Market that sells handmade beauty products, and three minutes alone with the proprietor earns Sherlock a confession (and a stern reprimand from Lestrade, as if there’s a social stigma against making murderesses cry).

All told, the case is disappointing and over too quickly. Which does nothing to explain why Sherlock is so damnably tired. By the time he stumbles home to Baker Street, it’s all he can do to make it up the stairs before melting into an exhausted puddle on the sofa, one long leg trailing along the floor. He has time to think that this certainly proves his theory about sentiment and its disadvantages—nothing is more draining than fighting against one’s own rebellious body chemistry. He buries his face sulkily in a cushion, and then he is asleep.

§

He doesn’t know how much time has passed. Groggy, half-awake, Sherlock is only aware that he is deliciously comfortable, buried underneath a downy duvet, anchored by a strong arm around his middle. 

Some instinct deep in his lizard brain makes a faint noise of protest, but he stubbornly silences it, allowing himself to press into the luxurious warmth at his back. It’s a solid, steady heat, like a well-built fire on a cold afternoon, and he drinks it in, savours it, feeling truly at ease for the first time since John—

_John._

A spark of panic fizzes across his numbed consciousness. The heat at his back suddenly seems oppressive. He rolls over.

_John._

His blue eyes are black in the dim lighting of the room. A small smile plays about his lips.

“Been awake long?” he asks.

Sherlock shakes his head, his thoughts still scattered. “I’m not awake now,” he replies, and saying it grounds him. No, he’s not awake. This is a dream. _Stupid_ , he adds mentally. _A stupid dream_. So when John’s arm flexes around his waist, he tenses, fighting the urge to let John draw him in.

“That’s alright then,” John says, seeming not to notice Sherlock’s resistance. “I like you better when you’re not awake anyway.”

And it’s idiotic, really, to be speaking to him, even if it _is_ only in a dream, but Sherlock can’t quite resist: “And why is that?” he asks.

John’s eyes have drifted closed. “Quieter,” he sighs. His breath ruffles Sherlock’s hair, sends a shiver down his spine, and Sherlock curses the way his toes half-curl entirely without his permission. 

John’s smile widens, and he slips one hand under the hem of Sherlock’s shirt to trace fluttering circles over the bare skin underneath. Sherlock catches himself leaning into the touch and groans in frustration, which John misinterprets as encouragement; his hand drops to Sherlock’s hip, tugging him closer, and Sherlock can feel the beginnings of the doctor’s arousal nudging lazily into his groin. 

“No,” Sherlock says, and it comes out in a hushed bedroom whisper that entirely undermines his denial. He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes closed. “This is counter-productive.” 

He’s done with John. He _has_ to be done with John. The last thing he needs is his subconscious premiering a midnight showing of the conjugal liaisons of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Christ, has the man destroyed all of his self-control? Four years ago he hardly slept at all. And now here he is, fully aware he’s dreaming, so why the hell can’t he seem to wake himself up? 

John’s hands withdraw from his back, and Sherlock opens one eye, half hoping the man will have disappeared. But no, he’s still lying there, alarmingly close, his eyes momentarily clouding: cautious, guarded.

“Counter-productive?” he echoes, and the uncertainty wavers in his eyes, settles into amusement. His hand reappears suddenly at Sherlock’s crotch, and he smiles wickedly. “It’s only counter-productive if I don’t follow through. And I intend to be _very_ thorough.”

He punctuates this threat with squeezing fingers, and Sherlock bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.

“No!” he says again, squirming backward on the bed, away from John’s questing fingers. He reaches the edge of the mattress and scrambles into a sitting position, one foot on the cold floor, the duvet tangled around his waist. John pushes himself up one arm, and Sherlock can see now that he’s shirtless, the scar on his shoulder a pink, puckered smear, his stomach soft and pale in the low light. In the midst of his anger, it occurs to Sherlock that he’s never actually had more than a fleeting glance at John’s bare torso. Odd, that he can see every detail here, could count the faint freckles across his chest, could map the path the bullet took through his shoulder.

John is very still, watching Sherlock with sad eyes. He reaches out one hand, palm up, resting on the mattress. “Please,” he says. “Stay.” 

Sherlock studies the hand, the sturdy forearm and firm bicep, follows the line up to the faintly visible collarbone, the rough jaw, the greying hairline. _Stay._ It shouldn’t be such a tempting offer, shouldn’t stop him short when he knows, he _knows_ he can’t afford to think this way, to dream this way.

His stillness and silence are answer enough, and John retreats, turning away from him, his feet hitting the floor, both hands gripping the side of the mattress. “No,” he says, his back to Sherlock. His voice is soft, like he’s mostly talking to himself. “No, it was never like that for you.” He rubs one hand across his eyes, tilting his head in Sherlock’s direction without looking at him. “I suppose I’ve always known it.” He laughs ruefully. “Christ, even in my dreams I know it.”

A pause. 

“ _Your_ dreams?” Sherlock repeats.

John snorts as if Sherlock has said something obvious, and the detective starts mentally back-pedalling, compiling the data and working out the sum. A dream he can’t immediately control, a dream full of details he doesn’t remember: the pattern of freckles on John’s skin, the complex nebulae of his scar. Not his knowledge. Not his dream. _John’s._

_Oh. Oh, Christ._

“It’s fine,” John is saying, which of course it isn’t. Nothing about this is fine. Sherlock has _never_ entered John’s dreams by accident, and John wouldn’t pull him there—not on purpose, not after today. Which means his brain is acting of its own accord, seeking out John without so much as a by-your-leave from his logical self. _God._

“This is impossible,” he says.

John offers him a hard smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it would be, at that.”

Sherlock frowns, caught between his thoughts and John’s implications. His feet are already turning toward the door, the long lines of his body trying to flee, but his mind catches on John’s words and holds on. “You really think so?” he hears himself ask. _Of course it’s impossible!_ his logical self cries, but he forces himself to focus on John.

“Sentiment,” John says, as if that’s any sort of answer. 

Sherlock’s body is moving now, the duvet dropping from his hips as he reaches for the door, his logical brain taking quiet control. But this other brain, this animal part of him watches John as he goes; the doctor stares at the wall, resigned, defeated, and the sight of it is a bruise on Sherlock’s ribs, purple and painful and irresistible. 

He can still see it as he slips out the door, as he makes his way down the warm-panelled corridor of his mind palace, as he opens his eyes in the dark of the his sitting room. He sits on the sofa in the early morning silence, his breathing surprisingly even, and prods that bruise over and over, savouring the raw, rippling ache. It is everything he shouldn’t want, everything he didn’t even think he _could_ want until he tore open John’s mind. And now, how John has returned the favour, tearing him open in return, opening him up to something new and horrible and so, so foolish.

He is still sitting there, counting the remembered freckles on John’s chest, when the sun comes up.

§


	5. Chapter 5

  
I don’t have a choice  
_(But I still choose you)_  


§

_In retrospect_ , Sherlock thinks, his fingers scrabbling at the arm around his throat, _I may have made a slight miscalculation_.

Lestrade will be insufferable after this. The DI warned him not to go after the suspect on his own. But Sherlock had been certain the man would be at work, that he would have plenty of time to explore his flat, searching for a crucial bit of evidence to link him to the murder of a vagrant teenager.

So when he found himself face to face with the man after breaking into his flat, it was difficult to say which of them was more surprised. In any case, the suspect recovered first, which is how Sherlock found himself pressed against this filthy carpet, wearing the suspect’s whipcord-strong forearm as a scarf. The rest of the suspect is a wriggling pile on his back, grunting and cursing in a rough brogue.

“Yore fecking for it now, mate,” he mutters, and Sherlock would sigh at the unnecessary commentary, but he hasn’t the breath for it, and anyway, a knife appears before his face, its glinting tip punctuating the suspect’s threat.  

Right, okay. Maybe a considerable miscalculation.

He sucks in as much oxygen as he can manage. “You don’t…want to…do that,” he wheezes.

The suspect snorts disgustingly in his ear. “Done it before, haven’t I?”

“But I’m… _police_.”

A flicker of hesitation, a tension that zips through the suspect’s spine—but not enough, not yet.

“Liar,” the man hisses.

“Check…pocket.”

Some fumbling finger work as the suspect passes the knife to his other hand—the one currently balled in a fist somewhere between Sherlock’s larynx and mandible—then drops his free hand to fish about in Sherlock’s coat. The arm around Sherlock’s throat relaxes in reflex, the knife, though closer, now pointing away from Sherlock’s face.

It’s all the window the detective needs. He throws his head back abruptly, feeling the satisfying crunch as the back of his skull collides with the suspect’s nose. The dull, echoing pain in his head is worth it as the man’s arms go momentarily limp around him. 

The detective wriggles loose, but he doesn’t get far; the suspect’s hand is still tangled in his coat, and Sherlock doesn’t quite manage to stagger to his feet before he’s tugged backward, arms windmilling. He trips over the prone suspect and lands heavily on his back. The air leaves his lungs in a rush, and he lies gasping on the floor as the suspect disentangles himself from the pile of limbs and kneels over him, breathing heavily.

Blood drips from an obviously broken nose, and the man dabs at it with the hand holding his knife, studying the red on his fingers.

He grins unpleasantly at Sherlock. “Gonna regret that.”

The lack of oxygen to his brain is making Sherlock’s vision swim, but there is no mistaking the glint as the knife slashes suddenly downward. He throws up an arm just in time, the blade slicing through the heavy fabric of his coat and biting into his forearm. Sherlock jerks his arm away reflexively, and the knife drags jaggedly through flesh and fabric alike before the suspect manages to tug it free. Air finds its way back into Sherlock’s lungs just in time for him to expel it in a pained grunt. The suspect flips the knife in his hand, and Sherlock can see the angle the weapon will cut through the air, knows it will bury itself just behind his jawline, point downward, cutting into the trachea. Not the most dignified way to go, pinned beneath a low-level drug-dealer-turned-murderer, aspirating his own blood on the floor of a filthy flat in Shoreditch.

The knife begins its descent, and Sherlock watches it happen in slow motion.

So he sees in great detail the moment when blood suddenly blossoms on the back of the suspect’s hand, sees his palm explode outward, sending the knife flying. Blood spatters his face, and it takes him several seconds to register the sound of the gunshot that has destroyed his would-be killer’s hand.

When it does register, however, time slams back into regular speed so hard it leaves his head spinning. The suspect has rolled off of him and is groaning beside him, holding his ruined hand. Sherlock sits up, feeling slightly nauseated, glancing about the room for the source of the shot.

He finds it quickly; the small, dark figure in the doorway wears an expression of grim determination, with maybe just a hint of desperation around the corners of his eyes. His gun is still trained on the suspect, and he barely spares a glance for Sherlock as he crosses the room with quick, confident steps. _John_.

Sherlock’s stomach lurches again, with something unidentifiable—relief? Horror? He shoves the emotion aside and lets logic take over, painting himself with a calm he doesn’t feel.

“Lestrade called you.” 

It’s a statement, not a question, so he supposes he shouldn’t be offended when John does not deign to answer. The suspect’s moans escalate in volume, and John aims a kick at his side. 

“Shut up,” he says evenly, and a slight cut of his eyes suggests he’s talking to both of them. Then, incongruously, he asks, “You okay?”

“Fine.” Sherlock musters as much of his dignity as he can and picks himself up off the floor. He tugs at his coat sleeve, feeling the slick slide of fabric over skin, but adrenaline has anaesthetised him against the pain. He’s more concerned about whether his tailor will be able to mend the tear without the stitches showing. 

Movement—the suspect twists suddenly, wrapping his legs around Sherlock, his uninjured hand reaching for the knife where it has fallen a few meters away. Sherlock stumbles, falling to the ground again, and the suspect’s fingers close around the knife’s grip.

This time Sherlock hears the gunshot at the same time as he sees the neat black hole appear in the side of the suspect’s skull. The exit wound is larger, messier, but this time, thankfully, aimed away from Sherlock, so he is spared a second showering of gore. The man tumbles sideways, his legs giving a final twitch before he goes still.

Sherlock eyes the barrel of the gun, following the line up John’s arm to his eyes, which are flat blue steel. John toes the corpse, then bends down to check his pulse.

After a few seconds, he sighs. “Well,” he says. “One less loose end, I suppose.” He glances at Sherlock, and his eyes are no less cold when they meet the detective’s. “I can’t imagine you’re in his flat legally, and now he can’t point the finger.”

“Doesn’t have much of a finger left to point anyway,” Sherlock notes, and John’s lips curl into a hard smile. Some tautness in Sherlock’s chest cinches impossibly tighter. God, he’d actually nearly forgotten how it felt to make John laugh.

But he doesn’t have long to dwell on it, as John’s face is abruptly suffused with heat. “Damn it, Sherlock—!”

Sherlock follows his gaze down his own arm, where blood is dripping from beneath his sleeve and pooling in his loosely cupped fingers.

John tucks his gun into the back of his jeans, pulling Sherlock to his feet and shoving his sleeve upward. Sherlock hisses—the adrenaline is ebbing from his system now, and pain lances up his arm as his silk shirt comes unstuck from the knife wound.

“You lying shit,” says John. “You said you were fine.”

“I _am_ fine. It’s just a scratch.”

Sherlock flinches as John rips the sleeve of his shirt, pulling off a long strip of fabric and tying it in a makeshift tourniquet above his elbow. 

“Jesus, just a scratch.” He tears off another strip, binding it around the wound itself. “I don’t know what’s worse: that you don’t care about your own well-being, or that you’re leaving DNA all over a crime scene.”

Oh. Hell. John has a point. 

Sherlock pulls his arm out of John’s grasp, holding it up to stop the blood from dripping. He glances around. Gravity and John’s improvised bandage seem to have stopped that potential disaster, but Sherlock is mentally kicking himself: has he really let himself be so distracted by John’s presence that he overlooked something so obvious?

John sidesteps the suspect’s body and uses his sleeve to delicately pick up the knife. He wipes the blade unceremoniously on Sherlock’s coat. When Sherlock opens his mouth to protest, John cuts him off: “It’s already in pretty bad nick. A bit more won’t hurt,” and Sherlock has a few choice words to say about the coat being custom made and why doesn’t John wipe it on one of second-hand cardigans instead, but he swallows the remarks, because that argument isn’t the one he wants to have, the argument that _needs_ having, the one about how John shouldn’t be here at all. 

With the knife clean, John bends over to reposition it in the suspect’s hand. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Sherlock says.

John raises an eyebrow, but otherwise ignores him. He pulls his phone from his pocket—calling someone? No, texting.

“Mycroft,” John says, before Sherlock can even ask. He has the nerve to smile grimly when Sherlock pulls a face. “We need to make sure the right people find the scene first. If Lestrade thinks to ask questions—and he will, Sherlock, he’s not an idiot—”

“You expect me to be excited about my big brother jumping in to rescue me?”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re excited about it or not. And if you want to be accurate about it, _I_ rescued you.”

“I’m not saying I’m not grateful”—that earns him a snort—“but Lestrade had no business calling you. Not when I’ve made it perfectly clear—”

John cuts him off with a shake of his head, rising abruptly and turning for the door. Sherlock, keyed up for an argument, finds himself bereft. He blinks, his forehead crinkling over his nose. “John?” The doctor doesn’t look back, and Sherlock is left to scurry after him. 

The detective doesn’t quite manage to catch up as they exit to the street. Illogical—his legs are longer; his stride ought to easily overtake the shorter man’s. Maybe it’s the still-ebbing adrenaline in his system, or maybe it’s sheer reluctance hindering his steps. In any case, he remains several steps behind John as they head for the corner.

The general grey of the London sky has coalesced into a dreary drizzle, and Sherlock turns his collar up against the damp before tucking his injured arm into his coat. There aren’t many people about, but a ripped and bloodied sleeve is bound to draw attention. 

Sherlock slows, drawing even with John just as a nondescript black car pulls up alongside the kerb. John, still not looking at him, opens the door and climbs in. 

Sherlock hesitates, but it’s not as though he has much choice; he soothes his pride with an elaborate eye roll and folds himself into the back seat. 

The car pulls away smoothly, a little wave of rainwater cresting against the pavement in their wake. 

§

They don’t speak as the car weaves its way through the late afternoon traffic. John’s jaw is set, his hands clenching and unclenching against his thighs. Anger? Anxiety? Sherlock’s can’t say for sure. Either way, his mood discourages Sherlock from attempting any sort of conversation. 

Which is just as well, because the detective doesn’t know anymore what to say to the man sitting next to him, the man who married and moved on, the man who’s just killed for him a second time, the man who sometimes dreams of pressing him against a wall and taking what he wants from him—and God help him, the man he’d let do it. What does one say to a man like that? 

By the time they reach Baker Street, the rain is coming down in earnest. Sherlock lingers on the stairs while John holds a hurried negotiation with Mrs. Hudson: it requires at least three apologies, two promises to visit, and a plate of scones accepted with a mumbled thanks before she relinquishes her sewing kit and a handful of cotton wool.

Only when they are safely upstairs does John speak to him. “Bathroom,” he orders. “Get out of that coat and shirt and wash the wound best as you can.” 

Sherlock considers arguing, but John’s quiet intensity is difficult to disobey. And maybe—perhaps in the safety of his own thoughts he can admit it—maybe Sherlock misses being fussed over this way. 

John disappears into the kitchen, and Sherlock trudges wearily down the corridor to the bathroom. He shrugs out of his coat, hanging it on the back of the bathroom door, then peels off the ruined silk shirt underneath. He puts on the taps in the tub and leans against the sink as the water warms, plucking carefully at the strip of silk cemented to his arm with dried blood. He hisses a little as the fabric pulls at the lips of the wound, causing it to bleed anew, but the pain does not deter him; it seems appropriate, that his flesh should be torn and open and aching, when the rest of him feels the same.

His skin pebbles, the thin steam beginning the rise from the tub only accentuating the chill air of the flat, and he studies himself in the mirror: he looks more gaunt than usual, standing in only his trousers, and the harsh bathroom light paints blue-black circles under his eyes. Which shouldn’t be a surprise: it’s not as though he can trust himself to sleep anymore, is it?

There is a hint of stubble on his cheeks, interspersed with a fine spray of blood that stretches from his neck to his left eyebrow, now dried to almost black. He reaches for a flannel, soaking it in warm water before dabbing at his face. 

“Careful with that blood.” John’s voice from the doorway, and Sherlock looks up at him from where he’s bent over the sink. He carries Mrs. Hudson’s sewing kit under one arm and a kitchen knife and a bottle of surgical spirit in his hand. His lips purse as his gaze sweeps over Sherlock. “Here,” he says, and sets his supplies on the sink. “Let me.” 

Sherlock hands over the flannel and sits on the tub, shivering slightly. John kneels in front of him, and up close Sherlock can feel the heat of him, the anger flickering like firelight, offering glimpses of something else beneath, but flaring back again before Sherlock can study it. His hands work gently, efficiently, wiping the blood from Sherlock’s face and rinsing the flannel out in the tub. He pulls a clean one from the shelf and sets to work on the detective’s forearm. 

“You’ll want to get tested,” he says, crisp and clinical. “Lots of blood, open wound…best to be safe, yeah?”

“The suspect was clean.”

“Pretty sure of that, are you?”

“I tracked him through hospital records. He showed up in A&E last week claiming a homeless man had attacked him. Had a knife wound on his dominant hand, blood on his clothes. Unfortunately, they didn’t ask many questions, but they did test him. Traces of cocaine, but otherwise…clean.”

John gives him a hard look, but he says nothing, dabbing at the dried blood on Sherlock’s skin.

“Not an amateur, remember?” Sherlock says.

“Yes, well, presumably a professional would know it’s stupid to go to an unsecured crime scene alone, but I don’t see it stopping you.”

“It’s not a crime scene. Well, it _wasn’t_ one.”

John scrapes the flannel over the raw edge of Sherlock’s wound just a shade harder than necessary, tightening his grip when Sherlock tries to pull away. The detective settles for glaring at him. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“No, you didn’t.” John’s tone is accusatory. He finishes cleaning Sherlock’s arm, picks up the kitchen knife from the sink, and smears Sherlock’s blood around the handle and base of the blade.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks.

“I told you already. Lestrade is not an idiot. He’s going to wonder what happened to your arm.”

“You’re making me an alibi?”

“We’ve got to give him something. Lestrade called me to say you’d hung up on him and were probably haring off after a dangerous suspect on your own. I came by here looking for you, burst in, startled you. Quiet a nasty accident, but lucky I could stitch you up again.”

He sets the knife aside and dampens a cotton pad with surgical spirit. Sherlock flinches as he tends to the wound, trapping a groan behind clenched teeth, turning it into a critical grunt instead. “Not impossible,” he says, his voice pitched higher as he talks over the pain, “but hardly probable.”

Another swipe of the spirit-soaked pad. “Then think up something better. I can’t be the brains _and_ the brawn.” 

And in spite of the stinging spirits, Sherlock catches his lips in the upturn of a smile. He mentally marvels: months they’ve avoided each other, jostled awkwardly around the ghost of their former selves, and suddenly, just for a moment, they’ve found their feet again, settling into old rhythms as easy as breathing. 

John busies himself with selecting a fine silk thread and guiding it through a thin needle, and Sherlock allows himself a moment to study him. His eyes are clear and focused, his mouth a soft frown of concentration. The sharp edge of his anger has dulled, shaped into a fuzzy sort of irritation that Sherlock recognises from a thousand rows during their time as flatmates. The lines on his forehead spell out tension, worry. Just above them, his greying fringe is still damp from the rain, and Sherlock briefly considers reaching out to run his fingers through the strands.

“Couldn’t find any drinking alcohol in the house,” John murmurs, laying Sherlock’s arm flat before him.  “You’ll be alright with the pain?”

“I’m not exactly unfamiliar with nee—” Sherlock cuts off as John’s lips tighten almost imperceptibly. “I’ll be fine,” he says instead. John holds his gaze a moment longer, and Sherlock thinks about the door in his mind palace, tightly closed—but beckoning, always beckoning. Then John gives a small shake of his head, bends over Sherlock’s arm, and sets to work.

Sherlock tries to concentrate on the bite of the needle, but the silence that falls between them highlights the intimate slip of thread through skin, the gentle pressure of John’s fingertips against his wrist.

He clears his throat, uncomfortable. “You didn’t have to come,” he says at length.

John doesn’t look up. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

“You’re angry.”

“Angry is the least of it. But yes, I’m angry.”

“Because I went on my own?”

“Took an entirely unnecessary risk, you mean.” The needle flashes in the cold bathroom light, the edges of Sherlock’s wound closing neatly behind it. John’s voice is similarly pulled taut, carefully contained. “Nearly got yourself killed. _Again_.”

“John—”

The needle’s dance falters, the doctor’s fingers pressing into his skin. “If you’re going to tell me it’s none of my business, you can shove it. It’s completely my business.”

Sherlock purses his lips, but John’s gaze is fixed downward. He takes a deep breath, and resumes sewing shut the gash in Sherlock’s arm. “Christ, Sherlock,” he mutters. “If it’s not my business, whose is it?”

The detective feels his stomach tie itself into knots. He hesitates, not sure what to say to that. An acerbic rebuttal is on the tip of his tongue— _If it was your business, you quit months ago_ —but he can’t bring himself to speak it. He brain is warring with twin memories: John frowning at him, the centimetres between them gaping like an abyss ( _It can’t be like it was before),_ and another John beside him, sweat damp and desperate, clinging to him like every space between them is offensive, whispering against his skin ( _Needed you for so long_ ). 

And the thing is, both Johns are real, both exist in the man kneeling before him, and Sherlock isn’t sure which one he will see when John dares to meet his gaze again. He feels sick with the fear of it, and oh God, is this how normal people feel all the time? Dizzy and blind in the face of the unknown?

“Before I met you,” he says, startling himself a bit by speaking out loud, “I wouldn’t have cared.” 

A brief pause, in which John still does not look up. He is nearly done now, and he begins knotting off the thread. His hands are steady and sure, but his shoulders are hunched, wary—waiting. Listening.

“I’ve had acquaintances. Friends.” Sherlock is watching John’s hands as they work, thinking how those fingers felt against his scalp—proprietary and predatory and so vastly different from this delicate, precise touch. “None of them stayed.

“What I mean is, I would have been fine. With you staying away. Not happy, perhaps, but I understood. My friendships have never been permanent.” 

John finishes tying off the knot and snips the thread with a pair of sewing scissors from the kit. He fixes a cotton pad over the gash. “Hold this,” he says, pushing to his feet. Sherlock obeys automatically, watching as he rummages through the medicine cabinet, searching for—ah, a roll of medical tape. 

“Didn’t clean all my stuff out then,” John comments, and his voice is light, but he is still looking anywhere but at Sherlock. 

“John.”

“Just—don’t.” The doctor takes several long seconds taping down the cotton and securing the makeshift bandage before turning back to the sink to clean up. “There now,” he says, and his words have the ring of an argument settled. “It’s fine.” 

Sherlock stands, one hand against the wall to steady himself, because he doesn’t want _fine_ , he wants _fixed._

“Please,” he says, and the word galls him, but he sees John stiffen and knows the plea has struck home. “I wanted you to be different. I always believed you were. But you did leave, John. Try to understand how it would be”— _excruciating, devastating, world-altering_ —“confusing.”  

John clicks the sewing kit shut, carefully wrapping the flannel around the knife and setting them both aside. He drops his hands to grip the edge of the sink.

Sherlock stands behind him, watching his face in the mirror. “You’re here now because you wish to protect me, but how long will that last?” John looks up, and his eyes find Sherlock’s in the mirror. His knuckles have gone white on the sink, but his eyes are searching and sad. 

John still says nothing, and Sherlock steps closer. “I would have been fine with you leaving eventually. But I won’t do it twice. I—I _can’t_ do it twice, John.”

“You don’t—” The doctor spins around, abruptly biting off his words as he cranes his neck up to look at Sherlock. He takes in his nearness, hands behind his back to brace himself against the sink as he leans back a little but doesn’t flinch away. “I shouldn’t have left the first time,” he says, softer. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

The cold air of the flat curls around them, but they are close enough for Sherlock to feel the heat of John, to smell him, wet wool and cinnamon and a faint lemon scent that wasn’t there before, some remnant of Mary still clinging to him. Sherlock is struck suddenly by the realisation that he wants to bury his face in John’s neck and breathe him in, wants to wrap himself around him and soak up all his John-ness, all his _there_ -ness. _He_ wants these things. For the first time, he faces John with only his own thoughts in his head, only his own impulses, and all of those impulses compel him closer, demanding touch and smell and taste and _more_. 

John’s eyes are wide, and Sherlock sees now that what he read as anger is really fear—that sea of terror lurking just behind John’s still facade, here it is, ready to swallow him. And yes, Sherlock is scared too, scared of what he wants, what he thinks John wants as well. It takes a bravery he didn’t know he possessed to take another step, to crowd John up against the sink and lean down over him.

“Sherlock.” His name crumbles from John’s lips like ash from a spent cigarette, bright and hot on the first syllable but fading quickly to nothing. John’s breathing hitches around it, his furrowed brow punctuating the name with something that is both a question and a warning.

Sherlock hears the tone but can’t parse it, his attention focused on the shape of John’s mouth—still slightly open around the final phoneme of his name—the parabolic curve of his lower lip, tucked neatly beneath the axis of its upper half. He is still calculating angles, forming equations, as he slots his mouth neatly, carefully over John’s, and kisses him.

The air around them is a held breath. Sherlock studies the texture of John’s lips beneath his own, the full-bodied taste of him hovering just behind them. He wants to drink him in, but he holds back; the kiss, this single point of contact between them, leaves every other part of him immobile, like dragging this moment from dream to reality has rendered it fragile, unstable.  There is nothing electric in the humid air that slips between his teeth, just the steadfast rock of John’s body beneath him, and the subtle, gnawing heaviness that presses on his chest until he can hardly breathe, his head spinning with the weight of it. 

And then he realises it’s not just his imagination; John’s hand is resting on his bare chest, pressing, pushing—no, _shoving,_ and Sherlock is forced to pull away, stumbling back a step or two. 

John’s spine is ramrod straight, his hand still held in front of him like a shield, his eyes hard. “What the _hell_ are you doing?”

_Wrong_ , Sherlock’s mind whispers. This is not how John is supposed to react. Sherlock is mentally backpedalling, struggling to reconcile the John in his dreams with the John before him now. Has he miscalculated?

Dream John was heat and need; real John is just fire, flickering and sparking over a fear so thick it wraps around him like armour. 

“John…” He doesn’t know what to say.

“Jesus, Sherlock. No.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to—Jesus.”

“Have to…?” Sherlock echoes, and for a moment his confusion coalesces into a bright point of clarity. He straightens. “You think I’m—what, manipulating you?”

Something that is not quite laughter bubbles up from John’s throat. “You manipulate like other people breathe. Is it really such a stretch? But _this_?” A harsh bark of not-laughter now, and the hand between them is pointing at Sherlock’s chest. “It’s a bit much.”

“John—”

“No, don’t. Let’s just…God, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.”

_Needed this for so long._ The memory spools through Sherlock’s thoughts again, stark contrast to the scene before him, and Sherlock is suddenly angry. No, _incensed_. 

“No,” he says, and his voice is pitched dangerously low. 

John blinks at him. “Sorry, no?”

“No. I’m not wrong.” He takes a step closer, and John’s hand is up again, warning him back. Sherlock pushes into it, hardly feels it. 

“Wrong? What are you…?”

“I am not wrong about this, about you. About what you feel.”

“What I—?” Then he stiffens slightly, and Sherlock sees the light of realisation filtering through the haze of his bewilderment. “Sherlock.” His tone is flat. 

Sherlock isn’t listening—his attention has turned inward, seeking the pathway to John’s mind, determined to prove to himself, to both of them, that he. Isn’t. _Wrong_.

“I was there,” he says. “I was”—he finds John’s door, bulls through it with all his typical caution and grace, tumbling through into John’s mind _—‘there in your head! I was with you when you took what you wanted, when you told me you wanted to be the exception to the rule. Don’t try to tell me I’m imagining things!’_

John, caught off guard, doesn’t resist the intrusion. Sherlock is still pushing forward, into John’s clenched fists, into the chaos of his emotions, which swirl around him with hurricane force in spite of the still mask the doctor’s face has become. Finally, John seems to shake off his surprise, and his eyes narrow, the force of his will gathering to chase Sherlock out again, but it isn’t fair—it’s John who’s made him want these things, John who’s made him _feel_ these things; he can’t deny him now, can’t turn him away again.

The wave of John’s consciousness crests and breaks, a riptide throwing him backward, carrying him all the way to the threshold where their minds are joined—but stopping short. John looks up at him, and his eyes are a storm.

_‘You’ve been in my head, then? Without my permission?’_ His fingers are cold against Sherlock’s chest. He snorts. ‘ _Don’t know why I’m surprised. Like you ever met a boundary you wouldn’t cross if it was convenient.’_

The words are casual, but his mind is white-hot around Sherlock’s, and when Sherlock struggles to free himself, he tightens his grip, vice-like. 

_‘You utter bastard. You absolute, complete…’_

He seems unable to find a word strong enough, and settles for increasing his mental pressure on the detective until Sherlock finds his hands scrabbling at John’s arm, like breaking physical contact will somehow free him mentally as well. 

_‘You have no right, Sherlock!’_

And there—under the violent surface of mixed emotion, an abrupt eddy of shame, burning and brilliant and bone-deep. Sherlock feels something dark and huge settle in his stomach. 

John’s eyes are wide and frantic now. ‘ _For how long? You’ve seen—oh God, how much?’_ A slight roll of his eyes. ‘ _As if it matters.’_

The thought bleeds into a flurry of images—John’s hand in Sherlock’s hair, Sherlock on his knees, John’s teeth on Sherlock’s throat—and an accompanying shower of embarrassment, quickly suppressed. 

_‘Christ, you really think that’s how I…’_

The heat of humiliation tempers John’s will until it’s iron, adamant and insistent, and Sherlock, knowing the futility of an immovable object against an unstoppable force, decides to give up fighting it. The lead in his gut makes his limbs heavy, and his fingers relax, dropping away from John’s hand on his chest.

“I understand,” he breathes. The chaos of John’s emotion shifts and swirls around him, and something else surfaces through the cringing fury, a regret that is aching and raw and almost sweet, something that vibrates through him like the final note of an Elgar concerto. It hurts Sherlock in a way he didn’t know he could hurt, to be so close to John and yet so far from where he wants to be. John peers up at him, breathing heavily, and Sherlock can still feel the slick of his shame. It sends his gaze skittering away from John’s face, his cheeks heating. “I understand.”

John’s will relents a little, his hand shifting uncomfortably under Sherlock’s. “Do you?” He sounds doubtful.

The detective takes a step back. This is idiocy and worse than idiocy. _Of course_ John is ashamed. John, with his endless string of women, his _wife_ for Christ’s sake, John who always insisted, who always said he wasn’t—

The steel cables of John’s mind are loosening now, and Sherlock wrenches his consciousness back. He slams the door shut between them, and only then realises that the burning in his belly is his own embarrassment, not just an echo of John’s.

John flinches a little when their connection is severed, his fingers flexing against Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock carefully lifts his hand away, backing toward the door.

“Sherlock.”

“You don’t have to explain.” _Stupid, Sherlock. Obvious_. He flicks a dismissive hand. It’s easier to be imperious, now his mind’s his own again. No one to contradict the lie. He turns his back, and makes himself believe it’s only the chill in the air that has permeated his bones and turned his blood to ice. 

“Sherlock, you can’t just—”

“It’s fine, John. Consider it deleted.” His voice is as cold as the rest of him; cold enough to hurt, the words falling from his lips and shattering on the floor. John, in turn, seems frozen in place, still standing at the bathroom sink. Sherlock leaves him there. 

The few steps to his bedroom seem to stretch, his feet as heavy as his heart.  Everything aches; he wants to shrug out of his skin, he wants to disappear. The cold dampens his senses. The walls of his room are bleached paler by the sun cutting in through the window, and Sherlock closes the door and leans against it, letting his eyelids fall shut. He feels full to bursting; he feels entirely emptied—and the silence on the other side of the door is a fitting footnote to it all.

§

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter should be up before the end of December! Sorry it has taken so long between updates...I promise I'm not quitting, it's just that teaching is a real bear. But soon it will be Christmas break and I'll be free to finish this up for all my lovelies. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thank-yous to **agnesanutter** , my cheerleader and arse-kicker, without whom this fic probably never would have been started, never mind finished.

 

  
I don’t love you  
(And I always will)

  
§

Sherlock sits on his bed, head in his hands. A deluge of words float around him; _exposed, caught out, revealed_ —and larger than the rest, glaring and accusatory: _vulnerable_. He’s never much liked deducing himself, but one objective glance is enough to remind him of the dangers he’s lost sight of amidst all this idiotic caring.

He has donned his tartan dressing gown, less for the warmth than for the sense of security. His mind is spiralling, his stomach churning, and not for the first time, he curses his fathomless need to _know_. 

He emphatically knows that ignorance is not bliss, but would it really be worse than this, than all himself flayed open, pinned to the dissecting tray of John’s judgement? It isn’t fair—John was the subject of the study. How has _he_ become the one on display? 

Of course, he can delete it. He ought to’ve done it before, before this got so…messy. He begins pulling up memories, alarmed at how many he’s accumulated in the last few weeks: John’s fingers at his throat, tangled in his hair, tugging at his shirt, John’s lips eager and warm on his own—and John stiffening at his touch, the ramrod strength of his spine, the heat of his palms as he pushed Sherlock away. 

So much to erase. So much damage to undo. In his mind’s eye, he reaches for the first snapshot, ready to shred it into oblivion. One last breath to steady himself, to finish this and let it all be—

“Sherlock.”

The detective starts violently.

“Sherlock, open the door.” John’s voice from the corridor, a veil of calm drawn over his words. Sherlock tugs at his hair and glares at his closed bedroom door, but he says nothing.

On the other side of the door, he hears John sigh. “If you don’t open it, I will. I’m not having this conversation through a bloody door.”

Irritation begins to worm its way through Sherlock’s self-pity. “Your obsession with conversation is exhausting,” he says tersely. “I think you’ve said quite enough.”

“Right, sod it.” John enters the room unceremoniously, as if he’s every right to be there, and as he steps across the threshold, Sherlock can feel the hair trigger of his control, strained to its limits.

He takes several steps toward the detective before the tension in the air rebuffs him, and he stops halfway between the door and the bed, fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides, a muscle jumping at his jawline where his teeth are clenched.  

“You can’t do this,” John says. His words are clipped, bitten off at the end, like he’s fighting to keep each one from escaping. 

“Do what?” Sherlock counters, obstinate.

“Unload the emotional equivalent of an atom bomb,” says John, “and then walk away before anyone has a moment to recover.”

“I see your capacity for exaggeration is still entirely intact. Good to know Mary hasn’t changed you completely.”

“No.” The air between them crackles, and John’s hands are hovering in front of him now, fingers curled as if he’s imagining having Sherlock’s throat beneath them. “No, do _not_ drag Mary into this. You _kissed_ me. You owe me some kind of explanation. You owe me that.”

“Oh, am I not thoroughly humiliated yet?” Sherlock sneers. “Well, by all means, John. Take your fill, then leave.”

Sherlock can almost taste the shame that crawls up John’s neck, leaving an angry scarlet flush in its wake. He feels his own cheeks redden, and hates himself for the weakness. He channels it into anger instead, into fury that John would dare to be ashamed of what he feels, to be ashamed of _him_ …

He draws his dressing gown tighter around himself. 

“That is not—that isn’t fair, Sherlock. Christ.” The air is charged, building up between them like static electricity, and John covers his face with his hands, his body sagging as if the weight of this conversation is suddenly too much for him. He is silent for a long moment. 

Finally, he sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Fine. Okay. Let’s just—let’s just start over, yeah?”

“Why?” Sherlock sneers.  “I think the situation is clear enough.” 

John’s eyebrows launch an expedition up his forehead, one hand clenching on his hip, his entire body shouting his incredulity. And Sherlock obliges him, because honestly, he wants to hurt him, wants to fling the truth in his face and watch it tear him apart. Somewhere under this mask, under this stranger wearing John’s face and hands and shaving lotion, somewhere is the man who dreamed of kissing him in the rain, and if Sherlock can’t have that man, he will destroy him instead.

“You want me,” he hisses, pushing himself up from the bed, and feels a flicker of elation as John flinches. Sherlock finds his gaze and holds it, pins him to the spot like an insect in a shadow box. Let him see how it feels to be laid bare. “How long have you known it, I wonder? Before I left? Not likely, not consciously; I would have seen it, would have felt it. So you realised it after I was gone. Did you dream of me then? Did you hate yourself for it? Waking up in the middle of the night wanting _me_. You were always the ladies’ man, weren’t you, John, so of course you would be ashamed. Had to bury it deep, refuse to think about it. Move on, fall in _love_.” The word is acid on his tongue, and John has gone pale. “So you wed Mary and that put it to rest. No longer confirmed bachelor John Watson, no longer Sherlock Holmes’s ambiguously-titled _partner_. No wonder you couldn’t bear to look at me when I returned. I am a monument to all the things you never wanted to admit. So you see, John, there’s really nothing more to say. I understand now. _Completely_.”

Sherlock’s vision is blurred at the edges, and he blinks hard, his gaze boring into John’s, his lips still open around this last parting shot. 

John’s mouth, in contrast, is a flat closed line, his hands trembling slightly at his sides. He breathes heavily through his nose. The tension between them is alive, is audible even, a low buzz in Sherlock’s ears. He can see the way John’s fingers flex, and he knows John wants to hit him. 

“You arse,” John says, his voice slick and coiled tight, a weapon readied for fire. There is a smile on his lips, a dangerous sliver of bared teeth. “You think you’re so bloody clever. Always a little bit wrong, though, aren’t you?” The lines of his body are hard, and he’s shaking in earnest now. “How long have I known?” He tilts his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. “You’re right on that count. I didn’t realise till you left, and _God,_ I felt a tit.” A spike in volume here, and Sherlock realises, somewhat belatedly, that John isn’t furious with him—he’s furious with _himself._

The understanding makes the floor tilt beneath his feet, throwing him off-balance, and he sways a little where he stands. John is closer suddenly, not touching him, just staring up at him, his smile fiercely self-deprecating. “All those months of denying it,” he says. “Stupid. And then it was too late.”

Sherlock’s chest is burning, and he realises he’s waited too long between breaths. He forces himself to inhale a dangerous lungful of _John_ , and that’s a different sort of burning, a bruising swathe of want.

“Months, Sherlock. It was months of hating myself. Not because of what I felt. Because I never said.” 

Sherlock opens his mouth, but John overrides him. “I know—you’re going to say I couldn’t have. Couldn’t have told you, if I didn’t realise myself. But grief isn’t that simple, Sherlock. It’s not logical. And sometimes I thought if I would have said something, things would have been different. Maybe you wouldn’t have jumped. Maybe…maybe you wouldn’t have left me.”

And Sherlock’s hands are moving of their own accord, his fingertips at John’s elbow—to give comfort or receive it, he isn’t sure. “John, that isn’t—”

“I know.” He closes his eyes. “And then Mary.”

When he opens his eyes again, they fix on Sherlock’s. “I loved her, Sherlock. You have to know that. Maybe I still do.” Sherlock’s heart wrenches at that, but John is focused, close and warm and serious and demanding attention. “But she felt you there from the start. She accepted it—accepted it because you were gone, and what difference did it make? She’d loved people before me, she couldn’t ask…” He trails away, but Sherlock’s breath catches anyway, hearing what he isn’t saying. John swallows and pushes on. “When you came back, though, all that changed. Of course I couldn’t look at you. _Of course_ I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I didn’t have the courage to say. Christ, I couldn’t hide it from my own wife. How would I hide it from you? The fear of that, Sherlock…Jesus, you have no idea.”

But he does, of course he does, because he felt it, didn’t he?—that first night at the pub, when John pushed him away, that bottomless ocean that threatened to drown them both—felt it, but didn’t understand it. _Oh, John_.

The detective’s brain is scrambling to recalculate, appalled at what a mess he’s made of this. 

“But I saw—” The images whip through his mind— _his mouth around John, his back against the wall_ —and the door between them is still closed, but it must be thin enough now for John to sense it, because he closes his eyes, his expression pained. Sherlock isn’t sure if he’s imagining the ripple of terror from the other man. 

“Even now,” Sherlock says, and his fingers are around John’s wrist, squeezing, “it’s embarrassing to you, to want that. To want…me.”

John’s eyes open, clear and bright, and the shame dissipates like smoke in a freshening breeze.  

“No,” he says softly. “God. That’s not—Sherlock, no.”

“I _felt_ it.” Sherlock is insistent. 

“Human emotion is not an equation, Sherlock.” John sounds halfway between exasperated and amused, and neither tone is sitting well with Sherlock, who scowls down at him, releasing his wrist. “No, don’t look at me like that. I know compared to you the rest of us are dreadfully simple, but you can’t just spy on my feelings, cherry-pick my thoughts and expect to walk away with a complete picture. It’s…what do you call it?—extrapolating from a single data point.”

Sherlock snorts. 

“But if you’re asking,” John continues, “yes, I’m embarrassed. I can’t exactly help what I dream, you know. And to think that you saw—that you were really _there,_ and I took—” He stops short, and his shoulders droop. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Sherlock echoes.

“I never would have—” John scrubs an agitated hand through his hair. “I know that’s not how you work. I wouldn’t have presumed to—I wouldn’t have asked it of you, is all I mean.”

“Not how I work.” Sherlock is stuck on repeat, his voice deadpan.

“Look,” says John. “I know I can’t ask you to forget it. But you have to know, I would never—Sherlock, you would never have to be that for me. Not to make me stay.”

“You think I offered myself to you as…as _incentive_.”

John hesitates, because yes, obviously this is what he thought, but Sherlock’s phrasing has already given away the wrongness of it, and now he’s unsure what to say.  

“You think”—Sherlock is gaining steam now, crowding forward into John’s space, forcing the doctor to take a step back—“this was meant to be an exchange of services. Sex in return for friendship.”

John has to open and close his mouth a few times before words form. Finally, he squares his shoulders, his jaw set in challenge. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he says.

It’s Sherlock’s turn to hesitate, a spark kindling somewhere in his chest, images flickering just at the edge of awareness: memories from John’s dreams, dotted here and there with his own imaginings, still raw and unformed, just vague desires shaped around the feeling of John’s skin under his fingertips, the black-blue of his eyes staring up at him.

“Tell me,” John repeats, soft and slow and sharp-edged, “what you want from me.”

“I want—” The flaring in his chest, the rush of heat, the sudden spike in his pulse—it’s maybe anger and maybe fear and maybe lust and maybe something else entirely, something that is all these things, something he can’t name. The images swirl and stutter, fighting for attention, but Sherlock can’t find a way to say it, to say the thing he wants most, the thing he is most afraid of.

He is so lost in his own head that he doesn’t see it coming; one moment he is drowning in his thoughts, and the next John is there, his consciousness reaching through the chaos, steady and strong, drawing him out again, and wherever John’s mind touches his the images coalesce: _teeth scraping over delicate skin, the tang in the air from a recently fired gun, a slow smile over a raised newspaper, the chill of bare toes under a warm duvet, fingernails digging into hips and hot breath in his ear (I needed this, needed you_ ).

“Christ,” says John, low and shattered, and Sherlock looks at him desperately. 

“I want…” he says, letting the vision unfold inside his head, this thing that won’t be spoken and won’t be ignored: mornings filled with builder's tea and burnt toast, nights of crime scenes and corpses, and day upon day of squabbling and solving and occasionally having each other in the hallway—a whole lifetime shared.

“All of that?” John sounds dumbstruck, the edges of his mouth twitching like they want to smile but can’t remember how. 

“All of you,” Sherlock affirms, and saying it stills him. The maelstrom in his chest slows, spiralling now around the centre point of John’s presence in his head. The fear isn’t gone, but it’s shoved the edges of his mind, far enough away for him to ignore. He half raises his hands toward John, hesitating, unsure how to touch him. “Everything. I want…I want to try.”

John meets him halfway, taking a step closer so that Sherlock’s fingertips are brushing against his button-down. “You’re sure?”

Sherlock frowns at him, annoyance winning out over timidity, and his fingers clench around the fabric of John’s shirt. “Repetition is dull. Don’t make me say it again.”

A flicker of something as his fingers tighten, a magnesium spark, quickly controlled, that is not his own; it strikes Sherlock suddenly that he is feeling the beginnings of arousal, broadcast through John’s mind. The knowledge slithers down his neck and pools at the base of his spine, because _oh_ and _God_ and _interesting._

John’s eyes darken a shade, but there is more than lust there.

“Sherlock,” he says, and the detective can hear it in his voice, all the dangerous sentiment, and while he can’t deny anymore that he feels it, not when it’s telecast in stereo between their joined minds, he can certainly avoid _saying_ it.

“Shut _up,_ ” Sherlock growls, and kisses him.   

John fights him for a moment, stubborn, determined to have his say, but Sherlock bites down on his lower lip, and that puts an end to John’s incessant need to talk. Sherlock can feel him, on his lips and under his hands and in his head, like the sun just over his shoulder, colouring every movement, so when John slips his tongue between Sherlock’s lips, bends him lower to take control of the kiss, Sherlock can taste John, and he can taste John tasting _him_ , and _oh_ —

“Christ,” John breathes into his mouth, but Sherlock barely hears him; his own arousal is stirring now, a slower burn than John’s, but feeding on the kindling of combined sensation.

John’s hands are stroking idly at the tie of Sherlock’s dressing gown, and Sherlock cups the smaller man’s face and presses himself closer, telepathing his approval in a technicolour splash of hormones and half-finished thoughts: _yes please touch God John please!_

John pulls away from their kiss, breathing hard. “God, I can hear you—I can _feel_ you—” 

Sherlock mutters something that might be agreement and tugs him back, trying to recapture his mouth. John laughs. He rolls his shoulders, ducking his head to avoid Sherlock’s questing lips, pressing a kiss to his jaw instead. 

“Jesus, impatient!”

“If it’s bothering you,” Sherlock growls, feeling John’s amusement like a champagne-bubble rush at the base of his skull, “then stop teasing and do something about it.”

John’s smile turns predatory, and he tugs at the tie to Sherlock’s dressing gown, leaning up to latch his lips onto the detective’s throat. Sherlock groans, fingers digging in to John’s hair. The smaller man crowds him back, and Sherlock lets him, stumbling blindly backward; when his knees hit the mattress and buckle beneath him, John continues to drive him back, not stopping until Sherlock is laid out supine on the bed with John bent over him, hands stroking over the bare skin of his chest.

Sherlock arches up into the touch, craving more—and with the door between them gone now, he doesn’t have to ask; John leaves him to shrug out of his dressing gown and sets about divesting himself of his own shirt and vest. Sherlock’s breath hitches as John’s chest is revealed, and he is overwhelmed by the sudden need to touch, to memorise with his hands what his eyes already know; he lets his fingers trace the freckles scattered across John’s torso, lets them map the complex whorls and valleys of the scar on his shoulder. John tolerates this for a moment, then nuzzles at Sherlock’s neck. 

“You’re getting distracted,” he says.

“Am not.”

John snorts, and Sherlock opens his mouth, prepared to deliver several salient points regarding his ability to multitask—but John aligns their hips and grinds down onto him, and Sherlock’s eloquent argument is lost to a slightly less eloquent moan as fabric rasps over swollen flesh. 

John bends over him again, pressing sloppy kisses to the detective’s shoulder, to his collar bone, to his throat. He finds Sherlock’s earlobe and sucks it between his teeth, nipping lightly, and Sherlock’s eyes roll back, his pulse thrumming in his throat, the tickle of John’s breath against his skin shooting straight to his cock.

And John must feel it, because he groans and rubs their groins together harder, his mouth falling away from Sherlock’s ear so he can press his forehead into the mattress. “Jesus,” he pants. “you feel—”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, and curls one leg over John’s hip to keep them pinned together as he fumbles with the doctor’s belt. John stays still for a moment, panting and overwhelmed, his pleasure hot and singing in the back of Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock is drunk on him, on the salt of his skin and the cheap shampoo smell of his hair and the soft flesh of his stomach under his thumbs as his works his jeans open. John inhales a shuddering breath, and Sherlock can feel him collect himself, feel him clamp down on his arousal long enough to return the favour, until they are both shimmying free of their trousers and pants and finally, _gloriously_ , naked.

Sherlock sits up, running his hands over John’s thighs, over the curve of his arse, settling on the faint indent of his hips. John leans down to kiss him, his tongue filling Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock has never quite understood the appeal of kissing—it always seemed so unnecessary, so arbitrary as a means of expressing affection—but John’s tongue sliding over his is satisfying in a way he can’t explain, wet and lewd and somehow beautiful. 

John guides him back until he’s lying against the pillows before shifting his attention to the long column of Sherlock’s throat. The flat of his tongue traces the pulse there, presses into it, and then his lips latch on and he sucks, high above Sherlock’s collar line where the mark will show, and the intention is clear—this is not just mindless lust; this is marking territory. Sherlock shudders beneath him, his hands trailing aimlessly over the doctor’s back, because there’s really no need—he is John’s, he’s always been John’s, and how could he have ever convinced himself otherwise?

But John is moving again, kissing his way down Sherlock’s neck, his shoulders, his chest, the shallow plane of his stomach. Sherlock doesn’t need to read his mind to deduce his intentions, and the muscles of his stomach flutter, his cock twitching with undeniable interest as those lips meander down to the crease of his hip. 

John smiles against his skin, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, and Sherlock can only stare, mouth working to give shape to his moan, to turn into something intelligible, something that doesn’t sound like begging, because damn it all, he does have his pride.

The doctor chuckles, presses a loose-lipped kiss into the coarse hair between his legs, and wraps his fingers around the base of Sherlock’s cock. 

Sherlock’s head falls back against the pillows, his eyes slamming shut, his back arching unconsciously, instinctively, curving toward the delicate friction of John’s fingertips. John gives one long upward stroke, listening to the harsh pant of Sherlock’s breath in his throat. Then the downstroke, carefully pulling the foreskin back from the head of Sherlock’s cock, and even though he’s expecting it, the first touch of John’s tongue against the glans is a shock to his system, and Sherlock’s eyes fly open because he needs to _see,_ needs all his faculties to fully absorb the perfect picture of John’s lips resting against the head of his prick.

John stays still, eyes dark and lidded, lips still swollen from kissing, a faint sheen of saliva at the corner of his mouth. Sherlock’s cock is flushed and leaking already, poised against John’s bottom lip like a promise. The detective reaches down to grip himself in one hand, and his other hand finds its way to John’s head and weaves its way into his hair, fingers curling into the short gray-brown strands and holding him still. John merely blinks at him, his tongue darting back and forth behind his parted lips, waiting. 

Slowly, deliberately, Sherlock drags his cock across those lips, leaving a thin slick of precome in its wake. The moan that rips itself from John’s throat is perfectly pornographic, his inner monologue disintegrating into white-hot desire and a litany of creative profanity, and suddenly there is nothing slow or deliberate in their movements. 

John lets the head of Sherlock’s prick slip between his lips, circles the head twice with his tongue, acclimatising himself to the girth of it, and then takes him in fully, quick and loose-lipped with his tongue tasting every inch, and the rhythm he sets is all desperation, with no clear goal beyond wringing pleasure from the detective.

Sherlock quite forgets about his pride, letting free a noise that is dangerously close to a whine. His fingers twitch and writhe in John’s hair, and it takes all of his will-power to prevent himself from thrusting upward into the exquisite wet heat of the doctor’s mouth. 

And maybe John senses it, that he hasn’t broken just yet, because abruptly he swallows Sherlock as deep as he can and holds there, gagging, his throat constricting _beautifully_ around him, and Sherlock so rarely resorts to vulgarity, but oh _fuck_.

It’s several seconds before John pulls off to breathe, and if he was pornographic before, he’s utterly debauched now, and Sherlock tightens his hold in his hair and drags him upward to kiss him, smelling himself on John’s chin and cheeks, tasting himself on John’s tongue. He drinks it in, savours it, because this is the way they taste _together_ , this is the smell of what John does to him, of everything he’d _let_ John do to him, and John must hear the echo of this thought, because he groans into Sherlock’s mouth and ruts against him, his cock a thick weight on Sherlock’s belly. 

Sherlock wraps his fingers around John, strokes him, feels in his head and in the twitch of John’s skin the way he likes to be touched. He gives him what he needs, kissing him all the while—far away, he thinks this may be dreadfully sentimental, the way his lips press against John’s eyes, his cheeks, the corners of his mouth, but there is so much of John to kiss and it seems so desperately important to do so that he can ignore the fear that tries to creep in at the borders of his consciousness.

John is thrusting into his fist now, slick and stuttering and _close_ , and Sherlock shifts his grip to squeeze the base of his shaft because no, not now, he’s not done with him yet. 

John’s head falls against Sherlock’s chest and he groans. “Sherlock, _damn it_.”

The detective strokes him slower now, keeping his fist loose, a dim echo of the friction John is craving. “Shhh,” he murmurs in his ear, then pushes against John’s shoulder until he slides down, his erection rubbing against Sherlock’s own, and Sherlock takes a moment to enjoy the soft-hard heat of him before lifting his hips, wrapping his legs around John so that the doctor’s cock slides neatly along the cleft of his arse. “Like this,” he says, and John’s head snaps up, his prick pulsing impossibly harder against him.

“Are you—?”

“Don’t ask me if I’m sure, John. I’m rarely anything but certain.”

“Toff,” John snorts, his fingers closing over Sherlock’s throat in a way that might be threatening if it wasn’t deliciously possessive. “I mean,” he says, his thumb stroking at the bulge of Sherlock’s Adam’s apple, “do you have anything?”

Sherlock swallows against his hand. “I’m clean.”

John arches an eyebrow, his gaze wandering down to Sherlock’s bandaged arm. 

“I told you,” Sherlock says. “I saw his medical records. He was clear. And Mycroft’s gone back to having me tested once every two weeks since you—” He cuts off, flinching against the sudden hard edge of John’s consciousness. “Since I came back,” he amends, and John regards him for a moment longer before the mental armour falls away again and his thumb resumes its idle stroking.

“That’s fine, then,” he says quietly. “I got tested after I found out about—well.” He doesn’t finish the thought, and Sherlock wriggles beneath him, annoyed at the loss of momentum. After a moment, John clears his throat. “Lube?” he asks.

“In the kitchen.”

“In the—Jesus, do I want to know?”

“I was lubricating the tendons of an amputated—”

“Do us a favour and never finish that sentence.” John rolls his eyes and releases Sherlock’s throat. “Christ, your idea of bedroom talk. Stay here. Stay”—his gaze travels once down the length of Sherlock’s body, and he shivers—“just like this.”

Then he is gone, padding naked into the kitchen. Sherlock stares at the ceiling, suddenly feeling the chill of the room. He can still hear John: the muffled clatter of drawers being opened and closed, the exhaustive string of curses in the back of his head as he searches through the cupboards. For a moment, it could almost be three years ago, Sherlock still and thoughtful, awash in the comforting background noise of John’s thoughts as he putters about the flat. And it’s that, the thought of John here, of John back with him, of late nights and cups of tea and bitter rows that neither of them really means, it’s these things that claw at his chest, that dig in sharp toes and hold on tight, suffocating him under the weight of so much _caring_. Sex is easy, all instinct and chemicals and physicality, but caring is something else, something he still isn’t convinced he can—

“Stop that.” 

He blinks, and John is above him again. The doctor lays one hand over Sherlock’s heart and bends down to kiss him, soft and certain. “I know it’s still something of a novelty for you,” he says. “Being scared.” 

“I’m not scared.” Sherlock’s answer is reflexive, and John gives it all the attention it deserves, which is precisely none at all.

John’s fingers trail across his chest. “The rest of us are afraid most of the time, you know. Of one thing or another.” One finger circles around Sherlock’s navel, feather-light, distracting. “And with this sort of thing,” John says, huffing a tickling laugh against the detective’s neck, “if you’re not scared, you’re probably not doing it right.”

“That seems”—Sherlock’s thoughts are losing focus again, drifting apart under John’s careful touch—“illogical.”

“Oh, it is.” John’s mouth is following his hand now, lips ghosting over the skin of his abdomen. “Does that annoy you?” 

Sherlock’s cock twitches with interest as John moves lower, but the doctor’s fingertips travel over his hips, sweeping around to cup his backside instead. The detective groans, “ _Immensely_.”

John’s face is hidden now, ducking between his legs, but Sherlock can feel the self-satisfied curl of his lips where they brush across his inner thigh. He opens his mouth to reprimand him—and gasps instead, because John’s _tongue_ is…oh _Christ_ , and his hands are…oh. _Oh._

John’s chuckle is throaty, muffled and damp against Sherlock’s skin as he pushes in close, his hands spreading Sherlock’s arsecheeks, his tongue flat and warm against his entrance, and then John is—oh, yes, _that_ , John is kissing him _there_ , deep and slow and right where he wants it.

“John,” he tries to say, but he loses his place somewhere between the affricate and the open vowel, leaving his lips parted and panting, one hand fisting in the sheets, the other clasped around his knee, pulling it to his chest, opening himself shamelessly and not a little desperately to allow John better access.

And John takes advantage, licking in long strokes that leave Sherlock breathless, and he can feel himself start to quiver, feel reluctant muscles start to loosen and relax under John’s ministrations. Dimly, he hears a cap being opened, hears the delicate _squish_ of something slick, and suddenly he’s wet with more than saliva.

John moves now, pressing a kiss to his cock, to his belly, to his chest. His fingers are tracing slow circles around Sherlock’s hole, his eyes fixed on his face, and every fibre of Sherlock’s being is want, there’s no way John can’t feel it, but the doctor is still and patient; his arousal is a steady flame now compared to the bonfire it was before, his attention entirely focused on Sherlock, and his fingers move with delicious intent, slippery and sinful and perfect. John wraps his other hand around the detective’s cock, gives him a loose fist to thrust against, and Sherlock closes his eyes and grips the back of John’s neck.

“Ask,” John says.

Sherlock shivers, rutting against his hand, and nips at his jaw.

John laughs low and breathy, his nose buried deep in Sherlock’s curls. “ _Ask_ ,” he repeats. “I want to hear you.”

So Sherlock puts his mouth to the doctor’s ear, lets his teeth scrape across the lobe, and asks. “ _Please_ ,” he whispers, and his bossy tone is only mildly spoiled by the way his breath catches in his throat. “Please _fuck me_.”

And John ducks his head, smiling against his neck, and pushes forward with his finger.

Sherlock makes an embarrassingly needy noise, and his body closes around John’s finger like a vise.

“Jesus,” John breathes. He kisses along Sherlock’s jaw, working his finger slowly in and out of him. It’s a small intrusion, that finger, nothing compared to what’s coming, not nearly enough to explain the way Sherlock suddenly feels so full, like having John in his brain and in his body all out once has short-circuited his sense of self entirely.

John is still stroking, his finger moving gradually faster now, and Sherlock is relaxed around him, his body pulling now, his hips rolling into some semblance of a rhythm as they grind down to meet John’s finger, up again to meet his fist.

“Jesus,” John says again. “Just look at you.”

A second finger joins the first, and John works him open now, fingers scissoring and twisting. Sherlock writhes and pants beneath him, beyond thought, until he can’t wait any longer. He turns his face into John’s neck, tastes the sweat beading there, and growls against his skin: “Now, John. Please, now.” 

Another two or three strokes, and John lets his fingers slide free, lips pressed against Sherlock’s shoulder in a semblance of a kiss. He pulls Sherlock’s hips lower on the mattress and sits back on his heels. Sherlock finds the tube of lubricant, squeezing some into his palm and tossing it aside. He reaches down to touch John, quickly stroking him back to full hardness. John’s prick is a glorious weight in his hand, soft skin over erectile tissue, John’s whole heartbeat against his palm. 

After a moment, John’s fingers touch his wrist, and Sherlock reluctantly releases him.

John holds himself in one hand, bends Sherlock’s leg at the knee, and holds on to his thigh as he lines himself up. 

The first touch of him makes Sherlock grind down involuntarily, and John winces, a laugh in his voice. “Eager, are we?”

And Sherlock wants to be sarcastic, but the truth is there, in his mind and on his face, because eager isn’t the half of it, and he needs John the way he needs cigarettes, the way he needs cases, needs him constantly and physically and absolutely _now_. 

John’s amusement fades. “Yeah,” he says, rough and dark and ruined. “Yeah, I know.” 

Then he pushes forward and Sherlock is breathing through the stretch, biting back a moan when John pulls back and pushes in again, deeper this time. 

“God.” John leans his head against Sherlock’s knee, his eyes fixed downward, where their bodies are joined. “Fuck.”

Sherlock can only groan in response, because yes, he can feel it, the fullness and the weight of him, the thick pulse of John inside him,—but he can feel what John’s feeling as well, the impossible pressure, the heat and pull, and expletives can hardly capture the sparkling firework sensation of it, the frankly _gorgeous_ intimacy of somehow fucking and being fucked all at once.

So he doesn’t waste words trying to express it; he wraps his legs around John’s lower back and pulls him deeper, nearly crying out as John seats himself fully, as they float in this overload of _tight_ and _slick_ and _perfect_.

Finally the initial shock subsides, and John lifts his head again. Sweat beads on his forehead,and he smiles, crooked and lovely. “Should’ve guessed,” he says. “Not like anything with you could just be ordinary.”

Sherlock says nothing, just basks in the warmth rolling off John in waves, the sensation that is definitely sentiment and definitely terrifying but also inescapably appealing, and pulls him down into a heated kiss.

John’s tongue slips between his lips, and he tastes of sex and home and everything, and his hips begin to move in earnest now. The urgent slap of flesh against flesh fills the room, punctuated only by their heaving breaths and the occasional cry when John’s thrusts hit just _there_.

Sherlock can feel himself racing toward completion already, the combined sensations in his head playing havoc with his normally well-disciplined libido. But mental pyrotechnics can’t quite overcome biology, and his cock is craving friction. 

“Go on then,” John says, feeling his need. “Let me see you. God, please let me see you.”

And Sherlock does, reaching down to stroke himself, his fist pumping quickly now, and Jesus, he is so close. 

John groans at the sight and thrusts deep, holding there, and then he is coming, and Christ, Sherlock feels him pulse deep inside him, shivers as the echo of John’s orgasm washes through them both, making his toes curl, and whatever cry John makes is lost amid the torrent of sensation.

Sherlock is still jerking himself as John pulls back, and the detective closes his eyes as he chases his own release. So he is caught off guard when his hand is knocked away, and he glances down just in time to see John’s mouth sinking down on him, and then his hips are snapping up, John taking his thrusts, hands gripping hard at his arse, and Sherlock’s world goes white. He comes silently, his fingers threaded through John’s hair, and John swallows him down,  lips working him through the aftershocks. 

Finally, Sherlock shudders, overly-sensitive and overwhelmed, and John pulls off, letting his softening cock slide from his mouth, and just the sight of that elicits another groan from Sherlock, who throws his arm across his eyes and falls back against the pillows, utterly spent.

John collapses beside him. For a long moment they are both silent, catching their breath.

But the heat of arousal is leeching quickly, whisked away by the cold air of the room, and Sherlock shivers.

“Move,” he says to John, who lifts an eyebrow at him. Sherlock swats at him with a pillow.

“Oi! Not exactly a cuddler, then.”

“I’m cold.”

John budges up, his giddy giggle chasing the detective under the duvet, and Sherlock smiles and lifts the edge of the cover, motioning for John to join him. The doctor has retreated back into his own mind, his thoughts hazy and muted, but the door between them remains open, and Sherlock pauses, listening to the contented hum from John’s corner of his brain, letting the other man’s warmth fill the space beneath the blanket. There is a long silence.

Gradually Sherlock can feel the post-orgasmic glow fading, feel the creeping, soft-padded feet of his own doubt, and he wonders what it means: John wanting him, John having him, John here in his bed—for tonight? for…ever?

His thoughts turn skittish and anxious, and John must sense it. The doctor rolls onto his side, watching him. 

“Sherlock,” he says, and the tone is gentle, but Sherlock is immediately wary. This is the talking bit, and no amount of necessity will make Sherlock like it. 

“I don’t have to stay.” 

Sherlock is opening his mouth to reply before he processes what John has said, and it stops him short. He blinks at him instead. “Why wouldn’t you stay?” he asks.

“Because,” says John, “it’s freaking you out a bit.” Sherlock snorts, but John ignores him, continuing, “And because—look, it’s fine. I know you said you want to try, but this…this will be messy. I have things to sort out, things in my life, things in my head. And you—well, I don’t know. You’re the only one who can say what you’re comfortable with. But I’m not expecting the answer will be everything, all the time.” He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “I guess what I’m saying is, slow is…it’s fine. It’s good.”

Sherlock stares at him for a moment. Then, gesturing to their nude bodies beneath the duvet, he repeats, “Slow?”

John laughs, bright and genuine, and the sound shatters something in Sherlock’s chest. “Yeah, sorry. From here on in, then.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock falls silent again. Abruptly, he props himself up on an elbow, gazing down at John, who looks punch-drunk and exhausted and somewhere underneath it all, entirely content.

“So if I wanted to kiss you…?”

“That…” John giggles a little and clears his throat. “Yeah, that’d be fine.”

So Sherlock leans down and fits his lips over John’s, gentle and easy and almost chaste. He pulls back, face hovering above John’s, breathing him in, thinking about sentiment, about how much it costs and how much it hurts and how _much_ , oh God how much he wants it. 

“There it is again,” John says softly. “That ‘caring is dangerous’ sort of look.”

“Dangerous,” Sherlock agrees, not moving. And then the side of his mouth lifts, and he offers John an odd sort of half-smile. “And here you are.”

John laughs again, reaching up to card his fingers through Sherlock’s curls. “Yeah,” he says, and kisses him again. “Here I am.”

§

FIN

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for WendyBird's "I Don't Love You (And I Always Will)"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144742) by [fiorinda_chancellor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorinda_chancellor/pseuds/fiorinda_chancellor)




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